I always tell people I never want to do another huge website redesign – I’d much rather iterate instead. Making small improvements one page at a time is easier to do, adds up over time, and is extremely satisfying work.
There’s still a place for tackling larger issues on a site all at once, but sometimes an individual page just needs a little TLC.
As an example, here’s what our Contact Us page used to look like:
And here’s what it looks like today, after some recent improvements:
Here’s what I did:
- Rearranged some of the boxes to put more frequently used and important items near the top.
- Grouped related sections like the chat box and texting info together.
- The HTML headers are now properly nested, making the page much friendlier to screen readers.
- The phone numbers for texting and calling are now clickable, which is helpful on mobile devices.
- Indents in the long list of our locations help group information and make it more skimmable.
- Increased font sizes in the Email form.
- The list of units within Wilson Library uses bold text and more obvious links to make it easier to read.
- Consistent fonts and font sizes across the page.
- The text on the page is now black instead of grey, enhancing readability and accessibility.
- Removed some unnecessary words and relabeled a few areas.
- Added horizontal lines to break up long sections.
I spent about an hour making these changes, and ended up with a vastly improved (and more accessible!) Contact Us page – which was visited over 7000 times since January! None of these updates were difficult, each was simple individually, but they add up.
It’s still technically Spring, so why not do some late Spring Cleaning on a page or two? Look at what’s most used and start there.