Curious Motion, based in Halifax is a non-profit arts organisation that provides dance classes, workshops, events and uses dance, movement, and creativity to tackle loneliness and isolation in Calderdale, with a particular focus on Elland and the lower valley and under-represented communities.
They create and deliver opportunities for all people to experience dance and the arts through projects, performances, and a regular programme of classes and workshops, with a focus on fostering togetherness and connection for individual and collective wellbeing.
Curious Motion had recently completed a rebrand and wanted a new website that would showcase and complement their new brand. They thought their existing website was difficult to use. Their team found adding new content like blogs, podcasts, and events/workshops complicated and laborious. They were using a third-party booking system and paying a monthly fee. They wanted to have their own integrated booking system that would be easy to use and would eliminate their monthly costs.
They had received negative feedback from users about their existing site navigation. Users often felt lost and found it difficult to find what they wanted on the site. Curious Motion wanted to ensure their new website had much simpler navigation with clear calls to action and a simplified customer journey so that users could find what they were looking for. They also wanted new users to feel more connected to the website and the brand as soon as they visited the site.
Their recent rebrand was mainly focused on a new logo. They wanted additional brand assets to strengthen their brand aesthetic across the new website design. They wanted custom made icons, blog post loops and stylish graphics that would complement their new brand style. As the website would require a restructure, with additional pages and custom post types, Curious Motion also wanted basic SEO services for the new site so that the new content would rank on search engines.
We began the project by creating a design-wireframe that implemented their new brand identity. During this stage, we planned the new site navigation and identified areas where we could create additional brand assets, like values and mission icons and services icons. We created the wireframe to allow the Curious Motion team to see the new design as a whole and to help them visualize how the site would look on other devices, like mobile and tablets.
At this stage, the team were able to clearly see where they could add new content and new images. We also created custom post types for their events, classes and workshops, their team profiles, vacancies, podcasts, and blog posts. Each post-type also included dynamic fields. The custom post types were separated from the website’s main page and post content, to make it easier for the team to upload new pages easily, and to keep the website content more organized and easy to navigate on the front and back end. We designed and created page and post templates for all pages and custom post types so that any team member could upload text and images easily, and the theme template would automatically be applied.
Once the design was approved, we began to build the website and integrate the booking system. We used WordPress with Elementor and Elementor Pro to allow the Curious Motion team to be able to create new page styles or edit page styles in the future. The booking system required us to set up all team members, classes, locations, dates, and fees. We set up automated emails for user bookings and a log-in page so that users could amend, cancel, or book further classes and events. The booking system is fully branded to Curious Motion’s brand colours and fonts.
We created a series of 12 video guides for the Curious Motion team to show how new content could be uploaded by the team. The new website restructured the old website and featured more enhanced functionalities, so we thought it would be helpful to create a video how-to library to help the team become familiar with how to use the new site and how upload new content.
For additional accessibility, we added descriptive image alt-tags and installed an accessibility plugin that enables users to change the font style and the colour, and to switch to dark mode for easier readability. Before completion and testing, we added SEO titles, metadescriptions, and alt-tags to each new page and custom post type, and ensured that the new content was being crawled by Google and submitted as part of their sitemap.
“Grinning Graphics designed a newly refreshed website for my non-profit, Curious Motion. They were super easy and professional to work with and understood what we were looking for straight away. The whole process was really smooth and efficient. They carefully considered everything we asked for and the design was even better than we could have imagined! We love our new website and hope it will help us reach new people and make even more positive change for our community. Thank you!”
Samantha McCormick - CEO and Founder
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