Across Cultural Consulting

User Task Flow

My team created a user task flow during the preliminary design process to help structure our ideas for wireframe mockups and CMS design.

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Low Fidelity Wireframes

Prior to building the actual site, we needed to create wireframe mockups showing a rough outline of how we could organize the content and media.

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Website Modifications

Wix Theme Change
To ensure our client had a successful relaunch of his business in the new year, my team thought it was vital to complete a redesign of his website, including a change in theme. The new theme brings an easier flow of information, a clean and simple look, and easy navigation throughout the entirety of the site.

Recreated Landing Page, Services, and Process Section
Our client’s original landing page was divided into three sections, but ideally all leading to the same service. With this in mind, we thought it was imperative to redesign the layout of his services; simplify it for potential consumers, and to help them better understand the options available. This was done by describing examples of his service in terms of differences with ethnicities/nationalities, organizational culture values, and priorities, as well as generational gaps. Opposed to having those as separate entities leading to the same service.

New Photo Selections
Photos are important to any site. With our client not having many personal photos of himself and his work, it was important for us to find images that were relevant to his business, as well as eye-catching to visitors. The client did not have a hero image with his old website, so it was important to choose an
impactful and meaningful image that correctly represented his brand and what it stands for.

In terms of the process, we included icons to display the process from one step to another. This also helped ensure a visually appealing site, while also staying with the simple look of the site.

Setup Website SEO
In order to rank well on Google, it was necessary to make SEO improvements to the client’s site. Many meta descriptions were missing on pages before making the improvements, and h1 tags were not sufficient enough.

We decided to do keyword research to find relevant keywords, getting a high search volume with low competition (ex. certified, CQ, trainer, webinar, cultural diversity, workforce diversity, etc.).

Not only that but by completing a quick Google search of some words/phrases, we could then analyze what kind of sites were optimized with those words. Also, when researching potential competitors, we could inspect what they used in their SEO that ranked them so high. This helped us figure out what we could integrate to produce similar results.

After our research was finished, we needed to write the h1’s, URL slugs, page titles, and meta descriptions. We were keeping in mind that they needed to be written logically while incorporating specific keywords. This is essential because Googlebot has to understand the site when crawling it to decide where to index it in Google’s library. The last thing you want is for your site to be ranked poorly or end up somewhere that is targeting the wrong consumers. By writing it cohesively, following word count recommendations, and using relevant keywords; Google will be able to understand where to place your site based on similar ones that have already been indexed.

Finally, when the SEO improvements were written out, we transferred the data from the Excel spreadsheet to the site’s pages.

Edit and Recreation of Body Text
My team essentially took what the client had written on his previous site and attempted to make it even more clear, concise, and direct. After our first client meeting, it was clear he needed a complete renovation to his old website. With this, we felt a story element would be beneficial to our client’s website because of the nature of his service, consultation. We first began with the research process to give us more insight into CQ and cultural awareness in general.

To be efficient with time, we wrote what we thought was best to convey the client’s service in multiple sections. This included; the process of his service, the “About David” section, a high-level story concept, about CQ, and more. This high-level story copy was created with the advice from our team lead, as
a way to give a potential client a taste of what the website would be about right when you enter it with a short 5-6 sentences piece outlining the significance of understanding basic cultural values.

After we thought the edits/recreation of body text were at a point where the client could read them and give his thoughts, we would take his input/revisions and incorporate it in the copy – as he is the expert of this field. His insight was particularly helpful when we created the results copy of the website because our team wanted to understand what a potential organization would receive after their consultation with Across Cultural Consulting. The client provided important information on this topic with a variety of detail our team took and restructured to bring the best out of it, for the website.

Mailchimp Setup
As the client wanted to collect emails from people who land on his website, he requested to integrate the MailChimp popup which displays when someone lands on the home page. The popup asks for a name and email address so the customers can sign up for the email newsletter from the client.

We implemented a popup on the home page and once the user fills in his data, a two-step verification is needed for the user to sign up for the email marketing campaign. Once the user fills his email and signs up from the Mailchimp popup, a “double-opt-in” email is sent to the user’s email address and the user has to click on the link in his email to verify and give consent that they wish to be enrolled in the email marketing process. After the user verifies themselves, a welcome email is sent to the user for being a part of Across Culture Consulting email newsletters.

Blog Subscription Setup
As our client has a blog, we thought it was important to make sure visitors had the capability to sign up for a blog subscription to ensure they were never to miss a new blog posting. This subscription will allow our client to automatically send an email to his contact list, notifying everyone of a new post.

Website Test on Multiple Devices
It was essential to test the design of our website on varying devices to ensure everything was consistent across all products. By checking various cell-phones, computers, and tablets, we were able to fix our layout (there were some problems on Ipad and certain browsers) to ensure all text and images were able to be viewed on all devices.

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