BlackRockPreschool.Com.Au features the custom Genesis child theme designed for Black Rock Preschool — Australia based kindergarten providing early childhood education services. The purpose of the website was to establish a successful online presence which would in turn act as a key marketing and promotional tool.
Niche: Academics
With growing competition in the local community, the school authorities decided to invest in the development of a stand-alone website for the preschool. Earlier the information about the school was hosted on the website of ECMS. Though the basic information was available to the prospective parents, the web page hosted on the ECMS lacked the ability to engage with parents and act as an effective marketing tool.
Service: Complete Website Design
Choosing WordPress and Genesis for my client helped me in offering an optimized website solution for the kindergarten — a website that is extensible, is built on the top of a rock-solid framework and is all set to generate greater visibility, business and revenue for the school.
Thanks for all your help with the design and production of the preschool website. It looks terrific and everybody is very happy with it. The team at Convertica did such a great job of understanding our brief and translating it into a beautiful website that will help to grow our preschool.
Justin Gehde, Black Rock Preschool
Objectives
- To enhance the online presence of Black Rock Preschool.
- To provide the necessary information to the prospective parents planning to enroll their children in the preschool (including the various events planned round the year).
- Better user engagement by providing the ability to easily contact the school authorities and download the registration form.
- Optimal viewing experience across the mobile devices.
Project Requirements
- Creation of a cheerful design that presents the required information in the organized manner.
- Ability to extend the site in future (to be built on top of a CMS, preferably WordPress).
- Fully customized website which allows ease of use and establishes the unique identity both at the same time.
- The website solution that is optimized for search engines and is fast, secure and reliable (to be built on a rock solid theme framework — there is no looking back when I have hands on experience with building custom Genesis child themes).
- Ability for users to engage with the website — by introducing a news section, listing the events, downloadable registration form(s) and customized contact form.
- Responsive web design for optimal viewing experience on mobile devices. The design was required to gracefully adapt to the various screen sizes.
Solution — WordPress website powered by Genesis Framework
Looking at the client’s requirements and project goals, I proposed a fully customized Genesis child theme. Due to a limited budget, the focus would be on customer experience as against bells-and-whistles functionality. WordPress combined with Genesis shall offer all the flexibility for future expansion as and when the need arises.
The Complete Design Process
Phase I — Wireframing
The very first step in the series without doubt is sketching the website layout and deciding upon the presentation of the information. This phase wraps up well with representing the layouts across various views / pages / templates in the form of the wireframes — the prototypes.
Phase II — Designing the look!
Then starts the paint job — the design. A colorful, fun and welcoming design that fulfills the purpose of the website; that precisely reflects the identity of the early childhood learning environment — that’s what Black Rock Preschool stands for.
Phase III — Turning the design into a fully functional WordPress website powered by Genesis Framework
Then comes the time for the serious job — to fire up the code editor and start building the custom Genesis child theme which will establish the online identity for the preschool — BlackRockPreschool.Com.Au.
There are several reasons for choosing to work with Genesis framework. Top notch SEO, airtight security, stable updates… the list goes on. As a Genesis developer, what I like most about Genesis is that it is a rock solid framework and allows for detailed, fine-grained control, customizations — the most prominent reason for recommending Genesis every single time.
Ready to use widgets, multiple layouts, custom body classes, theme settings, options, etc. not only make it easy for us developers to build the site, but all these features come in handy to the end-user in maintaining the website without any hassles.
Phase IV — Adding the initial content
Once the Genesis child theme was hand coded, it was time to add the actual content to the site — the textual information, featured images and some styling for the content to go along with the site design (for tables, notes, alert, additional info, etc).
Phase V — Making the site launch ready
After the content is populated and the final site design is reviewed by the client, comes the responsibility of making the site launch ready — migration of the site to the production server, installation & configuration of SEO & caching plugins, Google Analytics integration, Google (and Bing) Webmaster tools set-up, etc and the final review to make sure that the contact forms and downloads are working fine. And to verify that the site is all set to launch as soon as the maintenance mode is switched off.
Phase VI — Website launch
And then comes the final stage — the launch of the website — BlackRockPreschool.Com.Au; the successful delivery of the webdesign project and retention of a happy client.
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