Case Study: Pittsburgh Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy, LLC

The team at MIBS, Inc. had the pleasure of working with Pittsburgh Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy, LLC (PGH OMT) to redesign their website. Goals for the new website’s design included: a more professional look, a responsive design, and a greater focus on the users. Goals for the backend of the website included a more user-friendly content management system (CMS). The previous website was built using Squarespace and they had difficulty editing and maintaining consistency for the size and font of text.

The homepage of the PGH OMT website before and after redesign.

Notable features of the new website include:

eCommerce functionality to sell both physical and downloadable products.
Calendly integration for scheduling appointments.
A blog page.
ConvertKit integration to allow users to subscribe for email updates.
A frequently asked questions page with accordion elements.
A “services and pricing” request form.
User-friendly backend editing tools on the WordPress CMS.

Project Phases:

Our personalized website design and development process consists of four phases:

Phase 1: Project Strategy Discussion:

Procurement:

The owner of PGH OMT, Alyssa, initially reached out to the team at MIBS, Inc. via the contact form on our website. Alyssa had used Squarespace to build her old website and was looking for a professional web designer to create an updated design with a user-friendly backend. After reviewing the existing website and discussing Alyssa’s goals for the new website, the MIBS team sent a cost proposal detailing our teams’ services, experience, and capabilities. After signing the proposal, Alyssa connected with our lead website designer/developer, Sara, to begin work on the new website.

Project Kick-Off:

Sara began by meeting with Alyssa to discuss her likes and dislikes regarding the existing website. They also discussed design preferences, and reviewed the example sites provided by Alyssa. Lastly, we acquired media assets for the site like: logos, images, content, documents, product details, et cetera.

Phase 2: Initial Design & Content Population:

The MIBS, Inc. team created a live development environment for the new PGH OMT website on our own site. Once the development site began to take shape, we shared the link to the development site with Alyssa. This allowed her to monitor our progress, provide feedback, and request changes to the design in real-time.

After finalizing the sites design, the MIBS team migrated content from the pre-existing website to the new site. We also uploaded any new content provided by Alyssa. Communication between Sara and Alyssa continued throughout development, and Sara promptly addressed requested modifications.

Phase 3: Testing & Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Our team considers SEO throughout all our projects. It is not an afterthought, but rather it is at the forefront of everything we do. During the design phase of the project our team:

Ensures images have appropriate tags.
Checks all links to minimize redirects and avoid dead links and 404 pages.
Writes appropriate SEO pages titles and meta descriptions, using the keywords discovered in the planning phase.
Ensures all content and tags utilize appropriate keywords.

After the website launches our team also submits an XML sitemap file to major search engines for indexing.

We also prioritize website accessibility. During the design phase our team:

Makes sure that images have appropriate alternative text.
Creates a design that meets contrast requirements.
Conducts accessibility audits throughout development.
We also include accessibility best practices when training clients.

Beyond SEO and accessibility this phase of the project also includes site functionality, user-acceptance, and mobile-usability testing.

The newly designed PGH OMT website post-launch.

Phase 4: Launch & Training:

Once both Alyssa and Sara deemed the design and content of the website final the launch date was scheduled and executed.

For this project training was completed following website launch. The lead designer/developer on the project conducted the training, and the owner of PGH OMT, attended. Training was conducted via Zoom and ample time was given for questions. A detailed and customized training guide was also completed and provided as a future reference guide.