I, Han Kim, was given the task of updating the design of our APSU GIS website. From first glance, the website looks great, and looks like something any business owner may be proud of, but the goal is to make a simple, clean, user-friendly experience. This is where I had the opportunity to transfer the WordPress skills I’ve learned from school and my freelance work to optimize a site with UX design as a priority. That was the goal, but how do we go about achieving this goal?
First is to identify who your target market is and what is the main purpose of the website. Our target market is our past GIS clients, and new business clients looking for GIS solutions. The main purpose of the site is to educate, bring awareness to our projects and students, while developing a future client.
The process of having a great UX (user-experience) is being able to keep the user’s attention, while helping them navigate to the resources that they are looking for. While having our website open, I made a complete list of what needs to be removed and what needs to be added. Small things that may be overlooked such as, which icon should accompany a button, may have significant implications when trying to create a user friendly design.
After you’ve made the list of actions you’re ready to make changes as long as your previous website is backed up. We were able to have a testing server to run our changes, which I would recommend. Make each change and preview it to make sure the design didn’t disrupt any other element of the page.
Once you’re finished, review the website again top to bottom in every page in case something was overlooked.