Client stories
Expressions artisan co-op
Part 2, the website redesign
The site before
A designer hopes for a bad design for a "before" but Expressions did a great job creating their site based on a single graphic, a header image I created for social page.
First steps
We started by deciding what was important and what was not.
Since Expressions sells products we talked about including a store but decided that most members would not embrace the idea so we set that aside for now but decided to include a clear button for each member to individual Facebook, Etsy or Store pages.
Most important: get people into the store in Scituate, Massachusetts.
I felt like the current site didn't have a clear focus and didn't show the store or the quaint harbor area enough so now the backdrop for the header area shows the shop and the area (more images coming soon).
Second focus: the artisans.
Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder I feel that it is very important to get each artists best work front and center so people can make a connection immediately so, just below the header on the home page is a grid showing all 15 creators with a link to their own page.
Third focus: updates without my help
I wanted the folks at Expressions to be able to keep the home page fresh with new products and announcements, I figured out that the best way would be to link a block directly to Instagram so that whatever was most recently posted would show up in the home page header in real-time.
Member updates
To add and remove images or even members, Expressions folks need only go into a chart like this and edit what is already there. Design tweak are also easy but we are not quite ready for the hand-off yet.
