“Jimmy Rose rescued Shedoesthecity.com from something that was clunky and outdated to a redesign that consistently receives praise; it looks amazing and functions much more intuitively. Since the redesign, Shedoesthecity has grown 67% in just nine months.”
Jen McNeely
Founder, President
Shedoesthecity.com
Scope
Responsive
jQuery
HTML/CSS
Wordpress
Background
Shedoesthecity is a premier lifestyle website for young trendy urban Canadian women. The Project required a move from Drupal to WordPress with a complete site redesign aimed at enhancing user experience especially for mobile devices.
Design
The old site suffered from a limited navigation, tired colours, poor image handling and a confusing taxonomy. First we looked at how to arrange the site architecture in a more logical way and built the navigation around a series of categories and subcategories that comprised the bulk of content. As the site is updated daily with 5 or more posts we decided to feature these in a blog format with older posts below in a grid formation. Much of the content (fashion, parties, profiles) lends itself to strong visual imagery so large images are used to draw the reader into individual posts and a simple colour scheme anchored by a vibrant red adds flair to the photography. A floating navigation bar follows the reader down the page to allow for easy access without overburdening the visuals.
Development
The custom WordPress theme makes great use of native features like taxonomy, author pages and featured images. PHP and jQuery are used to enhance the core features of WordPress and add some dynamism to the site. To keep things light custom plug-ins were used and where possible coded right into the theme.