Drawing Children Into Reading, non-profit, educational, ecommerce
(Feb 2022)
TOOLS:
- WordPress,
- Beaver Builder,
- WooCommerce,
- Vimeo,
- SEO
Wendy Halperin and Holley Lawson
South Haven, MI
website: Drawing Children Into Reading
INTRO
Drawing Children Into Reading (DCIR), a preschool through first grade program created by illustrator/author Wendy Anderson Halperin in 2006, seeks to use drawing as a means to encourage literacy in young children.
I met Wendy in January 2022 in South Haven to discuss her need for a bookkeeper to support her short-term rental business of their beautiful home on the shores of Lake Michigan. During that onboarding meeting, Wendy shared a bit about the history of DCIR and some challenges with their website. I mentioned that Mothers bookworx also does website design and development, in addition to bookkeeping, so at the conclusion of our bookkeeping onboarding meeting, Wendy and I walked over to the building that is the main office and facility for DCIR where I met Holley Lawson, who has been working with Wendy since 2010.
Wendy is the creator of the DCIR program and does all of the artwork and videos for the curriculum offered to parents and schools. Holley is the Operations Director and wears many hats as she is a graphics artist and was learning WordPress and Beaver Builder to update the website with new curriculum modules and subscription products.
After introductions and sharing a bit about my website experience, Wendy and Holley both expressed their concerns about some of the challenges they were dealing with while building and updating their subscription-based website for DCIR. Apparently they had become totally reliant on the developers from their hosting company and were frustrated at the long wait times for necessary changes to their website. They also shared some concerns about the technology challenges and learning curve that Holley was experiencing.
I offered to take a look at the back-end of the website and Holley and I set a time to meet to allow her to give me a hands-on demo of the current state of the website and their hopes for the future.
CHALLENGES
I know from experience that working with big corporations usually means that you are at their mercy for timeliness of deliverables and you will typically be dealing with a different person each time you call in for support. This was, in fact, one of the first challenges that DCIR was facing.
Another challenge was the typical “too many cooks in the kitchen”. By that, I mean that every support call was answered by a different developer who, as expected, had their own way of doing things so the website lacked consistency and a standard model for the technical details to suport the intended design.
My personal challenge was that, while I’ve been designing and building websites since the 1990s (think AOL, raw HTML code and CGI scripts), I have decades of experience with WordPress but had never encountered Beaver Builder before.
GOALS
One of the first things that Holley and I found common ground and agreement with was the need to standardize the user-experience of the website. Even as a software developer in the 1990s, I always insisted on a UC (User-Centric) design approach where the focus is on the needs and preferences of the user. I’m also a fierce proponent of the UI (User Interface) design model, which specifically refers to the design of the interface elements like the visual layout, with the goal of making the it visually appealing, intuitive, and easy to use.
With those two goals as the starting point, I started reviewing all of the current pages to ensure consistent colors, fonts and operation/ functionality.
In addition to the review work that I was doing, I was also working closely with Holley, training her in best practices for adding new pages and lessons to the curriculum.
MORE CHALLENGES
Once we were satisfied with the website updates, we worked with their hosting provider to migrate the new website and shut down the development environment. It soon became apparent that because of the growth of the number of lessons, a dedicated server was now required. I worked with Holley and the hosting team to migrate the site to the dedicated server which resulted in faster response times for page loads, which ultimately means an improved user experience! But the cost was a financial burden for this nonprofit.
I have been using HostGator as a hosting provider since the early 2000s and have been very happy with their service. After researching their dedicated server options, and learning that switching to HostGator would save over $5,000 a year for DCIR and the other websites that Wendy was using with their current hosting provider, Wendy gave the go ahead for us to migrate all five websites to a dedicated server with HostGator. The process wasn’t always smooth sailing, but it was completed before the renewal deadline with the previous hosting company.
AND NOW
When I first started working on the DCIR website in February of 2022, there were 5 teachers and 122 students actively using the program. Now, as of the end of April 2024, four of the original 5 teachers continue to have active accounts with 13 new teacher accounts. Of the 122 students that had active accounts when I started, 79 are still actively using the DCIR curriculum through their schools and another 60 students have new accounts since February 2022. Additionally, 35 new adults are active users of the program.
In July of 2023, we introduced an Educators program which is a type of “Train The Trainer” set of videos and lessons that highlight best practices for educators and parents who work with children and currently have 9 teachers using that program. We have also added a Team based subscription model so a school can purchase the program and control the logins for their students.
I’m saddened to report that Holley has decided to move on to new career choices but am so proud of the work we accomplished for DCIR and I wish her the best in pursuit of her dreams. In the meantime, Mothers bookworx will continue to provide support for the website and their stakeholders.