EcoFarm

Making a good ExpressionEngine site even better, for end users and site administrators.

We take a two sided approach to website usability: the customer-facing website, and the back end administration control panel.

EcoFarm came to us with an existing ExpressionEngine site that contained a massive amount of information- events, news, blogs, and lots of pages of content.  The initial work we did for them involved some minor graphic design enhancements.  However, as we got to know each other and we became more familiar with their site, we found that on both the front and back ends of the site, there were quite a few usability enhancements that could make the site easier to use.

The Front End

We first approached the front end of the site, widening the viewport and expanding to a 3 column layout. We also added single level drop down menus to the global navigation to allow users to more easily see what was inside each section, and reduce the number of clicks to reach that sub-level content. These updates provided a consistent, simple navigation system that wasn't encroached upon by any other type of content or design element.  It really opened up the breathing room on the site navigation and allowed users to find content more easily.

We then took some of the information that was sprinkled throughout the site, modularized it, and moved it to the right column.  The column became, more or less, a promo area to showcase different events and content that deserved extra attention.  

Some other minor formatting updates took shape and we had a freshened front end that is much easier to use.

The Back End

EcoFarm has a lot of static-type content pages.  This site really is perfect for ExpressionEngine.  The Pages module was in use, which allows very simple editing of these static pages that would usually not change often.  The problem was that there are a lot of these pages on the site, and in a 4-level deep hierarchy.  ExpressionEngine can handle the content without a problem, but when there is that much content in a multi-level hierarchy, it calls for the Structure module.

Structure is an ExpressionEngine add-on that introduces a beautiful visual view to the control panel that makes it much easier to see how your pages of content relate to each other.  It also allows very simple page reorganization, adding of new pages, and adding of listing type content within each of those pages.  It was a perfect solution to help EcoFarm get a better handle on managing this deep site.  

Usability does not end at the front end.  A site that is hard to manage will force an administrator to work harder to keep the site up to date, and their site may suffer for it.  We keep both types of users in mind, and in EcoFarm's case, everybody came out a winner.