Summary
Outside of my day-to-day role with SkillsForge, I was tasked with creating a new website for the company, capitalising on their new branding.
The site also required an information architecture overhaul, which included streamlining the information and making the navigation more usable.
Ideas
I started by completing a competitor analysis, not only on SkillsForge’s competitors, but also on businesses offering SaaS solutions. I tried to identify the ways in which these sites were structured and the way that they presented information to the user. I put together a document that covered the research I had done on different themes that had emerged. This document included information on the planned re-design for the SkillsForge website.
Design
Once the structure of the site had been agreed with SkillsForge, I moved onto the visual re-design of the site. I started by producing a series of different mock-ups, matching the rebranding. I then presented SkillsForge with the varying mock-ups, before agreeing on a theme based on one of them, with a few tweaks requested by SkillsForge.
Development
For the implementation, it was requested that the site be built with WordPress as the content management system. For this, I had to teach myself PHP, as well as understand how WordPress themes are built. I managed to complete the initial build of the site within a few months. Once built and presented to SkillsForge, I made a series of accessibility and performance improvements. To match the SkillsForge rebrand, I also made a number of illustrations to match the style and theme of the company.