Case Study: Scottish Rite Valley of Pittsburgh
The Sottish Rite Valley of Pittsburgh needed a website with a modern and mobile-friendly design. In addition, they wanted the new website that to be built on a user-friendly CMS interface, so their staff could easily add and update events, PDF publications, meeting notices, and more. The MIBS team worked with the Scottish Rite Valley of Pittsburgh to provide an affordable website solution to meet all of their needs.
Pictures of the Scottish Rite Valley of Pittsburgh website before and after it was redesigned by MIBS, Inc.
Some Notable Features of the project include:
- A Responsive Design
- ECommerce Functionality
- On Site Calendar & Calendar Feed
- Facebook Feed Integration
- Google Maps Integration
- Custom Contact Form
Project Phases:
Our personalized website design & development process consists of 4 phases:
Phase 1: Project Strategy Discussion:
We kicked off this project with an in-person meeting with the Lead Project Designer on the MIBS team and members of the Valley of Pittsburgh’s staff. In this meeting we discussed likes and dislikes of the current site, and things they wanted to add or remove from the site. The Valley of Pittsburgh staff also provided links to examples sites and graphic assets for use on the new site. Subsequent phone call and email conversations followed this initial meeting.
Phase 2: Initial Design & Content Population:
The MIBS, Inc. team created a live development environment for the new Valley of Pittsburgh website on our own site. In this environment we developed a custom design for the new Valley of Pittsburgh site, and shared the link to the development site with Valley of Pittsburgh staff. This allowed them to monitor our progress, provide feedback, and request changes to the design in real-time.
After finalizing the design, the MIBS team migrated content from the pre-existing website to the new site. We also added other content provided by Valley of Pittsburgh staff to the development site. Communication between our team and their staff continued throughout development, and requested modifications requested were addressed promptly.
Phase 3: Testing & SEO:
Our team considers SEO throughout all of 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 final website design.
Phase 4: Website Launch & Training:
For this project training was completed before the new site launched. The lead web designer on this project conducted training via a screen-share meeting. We also provided a customized training document for Valley of Pittsburgh staff to reference. Questions were encouraged and answered. Some final updates to the site were requested and addressed promptly after the scheduled training.
Once Valley of Pittsburgh was completely satisfied with the design and content of the site, we scheduled the launch date. For this project we coordinated the launch with Valley of Pittsburgh IT personnel. This is because their IT personnel had access and control of both the new hosting account and the domain name DNS.
For more information about our customized and affordable website solutions, contact MIBS, Inc. today!
