How and Why
Website, optimised responsive web design, maximum sharing ability.
Who’s involved?
How & Why features the writing and drawings of its two co-founders. It offers articles that are insightful, thought-provoking and funny. It encourages others to join the conversation via social media.
What was needed?
How & Why required a website to showcase talent (via the written pieces) and create engagement. The articles were to be the main focus. No purchases were to be made or encouraged via the website. How & Why cares about its material and making it accessible for people to read and enjoy.
As a creative team, the How & Why co-founders had clear ideas of how their website should look and perform. This involved close attention to detail, precise colours, fonts and presentation. The right atmosphere and brand representation were essential. A bespoke website design was the only option.
Above all, they wanted to work with people who were passionate about their work and shared that enthusiasm with them.
What happened?
User experience was of paramount importance. This involves accurate display (on all devices) and ease of movement around the website. Visitors need to access the articles as quickly and easily as possible.
We enjoyed discussing how to achieve the best user experience, involving responsive design and offering suggestions to help How & Why attain its goals. This included the use of promotional panels on the website, for example.
As so many images were involved with the website we were careful to ensure that pages loaded quickly.
With such brilliant content and clear web design requirements, the website and the team involved were a joy to work with.
The outcome
We are very proud of the How & Why’s website and enjoyed the development process from start to finish.
A fully responsive web design
The website looks great on all devices, even on a Kindle, which is a bit of an in between size. Therefore, everyone can read the content and enjoy the artwork comfortably which was a vital requirement.
Helpful functionality
We had interesting discussions about comment facilities and embedding social media feeds, giving reasons for and against using these facilities. Importantly, social media share buttons remain visible as readers scroll through articles making sharing as easy as possible.
Efficient content administration
We used ExpressionEngine (EECMS) as the content management system because of its ease of use. Efficiency was a big consideration, from the re-use of site content as appropriate to website administration. This support ensures that the How & Why team and its readers enjoy optimum benefits from the website.
The Client’s Perspective
When we asked Climbing Turn to do a proposal for the H&W website, we had a very clear idea of what we wanted (and what we didn’t want!). And they were happy to build a bespoke site exactly to our requirements. Their approach is very impressive. What’s more they were genuinely excited about what we were trying to create. That was important to us.
All through development, they were always thinking two or three steps ahead of us about future uses, potential pitfalls of things we were asking to be built, and the best way to ensure the website retained its brand-style and clean lines. Using their professional knowledge of the Content Management System, they could keep to our tightly designed specs.
On their advice, we went for ExpressionEngine, which is excellent. It’s very intuitive and provides the ease of use and flexibility we need for handling articles with lots of pictures.
Climbing Turn are approachable and professional.
It’s been a joy working with them.
