Arkansas Yoga Center, a local yoga studio, needed a mobile-friendly website. We were very happy to work with them to redesign their site to meet their needs. A yoga studio website needs a high level of functionality plus visual appeal, and competition has certainly grown since this studio was established. We wanted to see improved SEO performance and better content organization as well as responsive design. Once we got to know the client, we also wanted to make sure that their exciting story was told at their website.
They began with some real advantages:
- An old domain
- A strong local reputation
- Plenty of content assets, including photos and videos
- Comfort with WordPress among the staff
We created a welcoming home page with the information new and prospective students needed. We used photos from their collection to show the feeling of the studio. We loved the diversity of the photos, which showed men and women of different ages and ethnicities, different sizes, pregnant women, and different personal styles. While stock photos can be a good choice, the authenticity of these images helped show the warmth of the AYC community. The screenshot above shows the page above the fold, and the shot below shows what you see as you scroll down.
We pulled in testimonials and social feeds, videos, an interactive map, links to schedules and pricing, and even featured videos. The new homepage has all the information the old homepage had, but with a lighter look and clearer organization so the experience is less overwhelming. It’s designed to pull visitors down the page, and the responsive design is readable on all devices.
AYC uses the HealCode MindBody Widget, a plugin that integrates MindBody, practice management software specifically designed for yoga studios. MindBody generates schedule, staff, and ecommerce pages through shortcodes. All these elements are integrated with the management software for efficiency and ease of use. Since this plugin is central to the studio’s office management, it was very important to make sure that every element of the new website worked perfectly with the plugin. Since the great majority of WordPress problems spring from incompatibility issues, we made sure to keep this top or mind as we built the new site.
We optimized the content following research into the site visitors, the studio’s clients, the competitive landscape, and the performance of the old website. AYC plans to do their own blogging, so we set up a blog page with a fun grid design.
With the sidebar on every blog post, AYC can share their adventures and their photos and still be sure they have social proof and strong calls to action on every page — automatically.
Keeping their archives was very important to AYC. After 15 years in business, they knew that their international retreats, TV schedule, civic awards, and media appearances were important. But we could see that much of the information was essentially hidden in the depths of the website. Reorganizing and optimizing the content makes it more accessible.
The result is a user-friendly, responsive, functional, SEO-optimized website that the Arkansas Yoga Center can be proud of. With the friendly WordPress platform, some training from Haden Interactive, and support as needed, the staff will be able to keep their online presence strong in-house, making best use of their marketing resources.
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