Roka Tree Designs

Client Intro

Roka Tree Designs is an organization based in Richmond, VA that provides easy, fun, and worthwhile classes to anyone that would like to learn Crochet or Needle Felting. They reached out to me to create their WordPress site theme from scratch. What followed was a multi-step process of idea generation, design mock ups, theme development, and finally implementation of the custom theme onto WordPress.

What problems are they having

They reached out to me to create their WordPress site theme from scratch. What followed was a multi-step process of idea generation, design mock ups, theme development, and finally implementation of the custom theme onto WordPress.

What goals do they have

First, The owner and I sat down for multiple strategy sessions to discuss where the site stood at the time, and the options going forward. The owner expressed an interest in a modern, responsive website, without too much fluff. The primary function of the site would be to host a blog to drive traffic to her Crochet Classes. In addition, the site should be e-commerce ready, and have the functionality to allow bookings for said Classes. The owner also expressed interest in linking to social pages, and to boost traffic through some basic SEO tactics.

What I did to achieve those goals

After the initial strategy calls, I created a site mock up in Figma, with placeholders for images, text, buttons, and more. Using Figma provided a strong foundation for further development efforts. I designed custom blog post listings, custom templates for those blog posts, and custom cards to display all options for the classes the owner offered through the site.Shortly after the mock ups were complete, I had another call with the owner to discuss the implementation of the functionality listed above. For the primary fucntion of hosting blog posts, we had already decided on WordPress, with hosting provided by WordPress.com.* For the e-commerce functionality we decided on woo-commerce, which is the industry-standard plugin to add this functionality to WordPress. Finally, we decided on Bookly to implement the booking organization of Crochet Classes.Next, I focused on the layout of the pages themselves, the homepage is the first one I completed. Using custom WordPress functions and CSS tags, I created form-fitting headings, paragraphs, and cards for a brief introduction and the class listing. Following that was the about page, on which I opted to include some images and a brief text section about the owner. Finally came the blog post templates themselves.After the implementation of the static portions of the site, I installed the Bookly and WooCommerce plugins, and got to work customizing the default text, colors, buttons, and more to fit in with our desired brand image.*WordPress is an open-source framework for blog posts, while WordPress.com offers paid hosting of that platform

Results of our efforts

After this work was completed we ended up with a modern, responsive, and appealing website. The site has fast load times, contributing to a stellar lighthouse score. The functionality all works great, with minimal friction between components. Finally, the whole site has been optimized for a high page raking through inventive SEO strategies. Analytics has been integrated from the start, allowing us to gain significant insights to page viewers and conversion rates.

Insights Gained

This project tested my skills, which allowed me to grow.The largest issues I had to overcome were my project management skills. Keeping files in order and managing scope creep, all while making progress every day. Backing up the project was something I learned the hard way; after losing all progress due to a corrupted file. I also learned Docker to quickly spin up a development environment, and to keep everything contained within a specific directory. Strategy calls are difficult to finish, and plans are hard to boil down to specifics. Budget overruns were avoided, and the project finished quickly, all things considered.