We first started working with the Peninsula Traffic Congestion Relief Alliance, Commute.org in 2012. We supported their existing website for 2 years and then redesigned and developed it in 2014. The new website served them well for the next 6 years but times have changed, technologies have improved and business needs shifted. The Pandemic significantly reduced the amount of traffic on the road and with so many fewer commuters going to the office, the timing was perfect to reevaluate the existing website framework and refresh the design. We determined that switching to WordPress was the best plan as the commute.org team would be able to manage the site with more ease and the tools available better suited the business.
Design
With the Pandemic slowing down the day-to-day traffic management responsibilities of the team, we had an opportunity to truly collaborate and do a deep dive into the design requirements of a new website with a goal of creating something that could serve the business with the same type of timelessness as the previous site we designed. We documented all of the design features that the team wanted, did user studies to help inform the user experience and we got to work on the home page. Once we landed on a design we all liked we moved on to interior page designs with an emphasis on the mobile experience. One of the challenges was displaying shuttle route stops and times for mobile in a way that was not cumbersome. Because we had the time to fully think this through, we were able to put a lot of thought into the best solution.
Design & Develop
Commute.org had decades of past documents, meeting notes, route schedules and event information stored all over their website. Architecting a file management system, a process for both file and url removal and redirection and reorganization of content was an intense practice in website architecture and SEO best practice. Once we completed this process, we were able to begin development of the new WordPress theme files.
Training and Content Management
Once we completed building the theme files and page templates, the final step was to train the team to use the WordPress website and let them loose on content migration. Migration was not a straightforward 1:1 process. We had mapped content from the old site to smaller sections on the new site to accomplish more information on each page but with less clutter and easier navigation. The team learned the new system fairly easily and in the process of using it were able to identify additional features we could build to help them with their day-to-day management of the website. This became our QA process as we spent a month migrating content, building redirects and adding tools. The website was presented to and received well by the Board of Directors and we launched the new site at the end of April 2021. We continue to help Commute.org with regular updates and any future projects.
