KoiPS
I renewed the website of Koivukylän Palloseura (KoiPS) from start to finish. The project included benchmarking, IA design and testing, determining the visual look such as fonts and colours, layout design, building it on WordPress, teaching the client how to use the site, and producing a 47-page user manual.
My role
- UI/UX design
- Website design
- Website development
- Project management
Tools
- Figma
- WordPress
- CSS, PHP
How'd I do?
“Working with Minna is easy, she is very proficient and flexible. We are really pleased with the result”
– Mika Rintala, Koivukylän Palloseura
I renewed the website of Koivukylän Palloseura (KoiPS) from start to finish. The project included benchmarking, IA design and testing, determining the visual look such as fonts and colours, layout design, building it on WordPress, teaching the client how to use the site, and producing a 47-page user manual.
My role
- UI/UX design
- Website design
- Website development
- Project management
Tools
- Figma
- WordPress
- CSS, PHP
How'd I do?
“Working with Minna is easy, she is very proficient and flexible. We are really pleased with the result”
– Mika Rintala, Koivukylän Palloseura
The longer story
In the beginning I created an offer and a contract for the football club KoiPS. After meetings with the client and determining the main objectives of the website renewal, I built a project plan and a schedule. The project included many stages and in between I had meetings with the client where we discussed my design choices prior to moving to the next step. Before I started building the site, I looked at different WordPress themes and consulted WordPress developers. After exploring the options, I went with The7 theme due to its functions, versatility and customizability.
One of the objectives of the site was to prioritize the men’s team, however, it was important to find a balance and not to highlight them too much. This was accomplished by creating a separate team site for them that was still under “Teams” as well as their own news category on the front page. The client also wished that the site would be modern, responsive and simple. In order to achieve this I cut down some of the content with the client’s permission. One goal for the admin side was to have a user category that could only access team sites. I solved this by a short PHP code snippet and some CSS.
The biggest challenge in the website renewal was the schedule. The project began in April 2019 and the website was handed over to the client in July 2020. Because the client didn’t have enough time nor people to create the content, the client had trouble in sending me the content on time. Despite consulting others, the contract didn’t have a fine for the client if they missed a deadline. It simply stated that I could drop the project, but I had spent too many hours on the project when this happened. It also brought up the challenge of me wanting to iterate even more. In a year, I developed a lot as a designer and thus some changes were done.
Although the schedule didn’t hold, I had great communication with the client and all was done in the end. The client thanked me for pushing them forward and reminding them about the missing content. As someone who has worked with sport clubs before and been part of many, I know that the resources are scarce and I empathised with the client.
This was the first website project I did on my own and I learned a great deal about managing all the aspects of a website renewal, WordPress development, client communication and what might happen when your contract isn’t on point.