Project info
- CLIENT: PERIMENOPAUSAL MAMAS PODCAST
- DATE: NOVEMBER 2021
- LINK: LIVE WEBSITE
The Perimenopausal Mamas Podcast is a weekly podcast by two Canadian naturopaths that helps perimenopausal moms raise healthy kids and navigate the bumpy road of unpredictable hormonal changes that can interfere with mood, energy, weight, sleep, focus and vitality.
One year had passed since we first created their website in 2020, and the design already felt a bit clunky. The original design was based on a Divi theme and had a lot of extra visual features which, although they seemed great a year before, had begun to feel distracting – after all, the key purpose for the website is to attract new podcast subscribers. It had also become laggy and needed some minor revisions to speed it up and make it easier for users to view.
We migrated the site to a different host, simplified the overall layout, beefed up the hosting back end to make sure it was as up to date as possible, removed some of the extraneous “pretty” visual effects, and added a testimonials section. Now it’s performing at top speeds and its visitor traffic has improved, and their podcast audience continues to grow!
Responsive Design
All websites need to be responsive, which means that they adapt to fit the size of your screen regardless of what type of device you’re using. But responsiveness is not your only goal. Accessibility and performance are just as critical.
The Homepage
This homepage layout includes all the necessary information, without any overwhelm for first-time visitors. The call to action in the hero section is clear, there’s a brief introduction to the two podcast hosts with links to read more if you’re so inclined, a summary section of the two most recent episodes, some testimonials, and – perhaps the most important piece of all – a “how to subscribe” section. Added to that, a truly awesome search feature that allows you to enter any search term you like and pull results from all the shownotes and bring up any relevant podcast episodes, and this simple podcasting website sets a great standard for podcasters.
Performance Testing
As a super useful tool and a nod to my own nerd factor, performance tests are a key piece of information when analyzing and revamping websites. I use a variety of these testing tools on a regular basis to get a good sense of both how well a website is performing, as well as potential bottlenecks and issues.
It is extremely common for websites to slow down over time. But in March 2021, the performance for this website suddenly dropped significantly:
The test results on the left are a clear indication that something is going on! LCP means that the website was taking just over 4 seconds to visibly load, and you can see the Performance is down to 35% (in red). This is a big red flag to alert us that investigation was needed. Preliminary evaluations and optimizations resulted in some pretty good improvements, and the website was now loading in 1.6 seconds.
However, we decided we needed to go further and do a deeper review of the website. We migrated to a new host, cleaned up the design even further, and ran several tests to be sure of the results. A few months later, here is the final result:
These results are much better! In the months since, we run these and similar tests regularly to be sure performance continues to be optimal.