Client requirements

Rudge Landscapes wanted a straightforward website to display work they have previously completed; the goal was to improve conversion rate while also helping customers find the exact garden they wanted based on a massive catalogue of gardens Rudge Landscapes have completed.

Constraints

Rudge Landscapes was very open to any ideas I had due to my relation to the team and my skillset, so the constraints were simple.

• The website must work on both mobile and desktop
• The website needs to be simple to use
• The website must be easy to maintain so it can be maintained by Rudge Landscapes

Why WordPress was chosen

While WordPress is less customisable than other solutions such as React or even plain HTML and CSS, I decided it was great for this project. This was mainly due to its simple nature which would allow Rudge Landscapes to change images and text without my help. The choice was also ideal as before creating this site I only had experience with Python and WordPress.

Features

The finished site has all the features Rudge Landscapes wanted, such as:

• Modern landing page
• Clickable images for navigation
• Approvable review system
• Metrics for how many customers are viewing the site pages

Conclusion

Rudge Landscapes were happy with their new website; I have also been told that their customers haven't mentioned any major issues navigating and apparently multiple customers have mentioned how helpful it was in finding the garden they wanted. This project taught me how important it is to have an optimised layout based on which age group would need to use the site. I also learnt how to communicate with the client to ensure we are both happy with progress and the design.

Future improvements

In the future, I plan to rebuild the website from scratch in Next.js to allow for better performance, cheaper hosting, and more customisability. I also plan on adding a blog system which clones their Facebook posts for better SEO.