Librarian, speaker, and local TV show host Barb Langridge already had a growing website with thousands of book reviews. The content was there, but the site was plagued by technical issues. It was clunky, prone to security breaches, not mobile-friendly, and the visual style wasn’t reaching her target audiences—school kids and the adults that help them choose their books.

I completely rebuilt the site from the ground up in WordPress (and an awesome plugin called JReviews). The design was cleaned up, book covers were brought front and center, and fun new illustrations were created to get kids’ attention. The new logo is an illustration all by itself, combining disparate genres of literature to express the fact that reading is for everyone.

The new site not only looks better, it performs better as well—since its launch in 2016, the site has seen more users, sessions, and pageviews than ever before. It’s more secure, easier to navigate, and more effective.

I also added a bunch of new features to the site:

• Filterable search widget which displays book queries in real time without a page reload
• Read Around The World—interactive world map
• Interactive multiple choice assessments to help kids discover their Reader Type
• “My account” page for new users
• Filterable Keywords list
• Archive pages of Barb’s various TV appearances, both on the local news broadcast as well as her own show