ENJOY OXFORD WEBSITE REDESIGN
project lead & senior capstone project
For my senior capstone in professional writing, we worked with the client Enjoy Oxford, the visitor's bureau in Oxford, OH, to redesign, revitalize, and create new content across all existing channels. Throughout the project, we completed an in-depth content audit, UX research, and a full redesign of Enjoy Oxford's website that is soon to be live. The capstone has finished, but as Enjoy Oxford shifts over to this new website, I am continuing work as a project lead and helping them seamlessly adopt this new website.
Tools used: Weebly, Basecamp
overview
For this capstone, we partnered with Enjoy Oxford, the local visitor's bureau in Oxford, OH, to redesign their existing content and create new content based on their needs. With only one permanent staff member, Enjoy Oxford has a plethora of information about the city itself that is helpful to residents and visitors alike—but time and energy constraints sometimes keep them from meeting their full potential.
After completing a content audit as a class for both Enjoy Oxford and similar visitor's bureaus, we decided to focus on three content needs for Enjoy Oxford: a website redesign, social media content, and a dog brochure. I was placed on the website redesign team along with five of my peers.
UX research
Before beginning the redesign, each member of the class interviewed two people with connections to Miami University and Oxford, OH and conducted usability testing for Enjoy Oxford's current website. Questions for this research, which was approved by the university IRB, centered on ease of navigation, audience desires for content, and recommendations that users may have on what Enjoy Oxford should focus on in the future.
Key takeaways from this research included:
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Navigation on the current Enjoy Oxford website was difficult due to redundant and unclear menu options
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Users had difficulty finding the information they wanted and/or needed from the website
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Overall visual content was good, but use of branding and layout of content could be improved to be more visually pleasing
Following this feedback, our website redesign focused on improving navigation in the form of a menu bar, reorganizing pages and blog posts for clearer use, and improving alignment to brand guidelines on the site.
final website
In the end, we completed a full redesign of the website that improved on all difficulties found in the user testing. Although we collaboratively worked on all parts of the website, my focus was on the "Annual Events" and seasonal pages, "Blog" page, "Home" page, and "Calendar" page. I also worked on the HTML of the Weebly template we used to ensure the design met all our needs and worked with our professor to set up the domain and security settings on the site.
To view the full site (currently protected with password: enjoyoxford), click here:
