Ok so, why did we need to redesign the WordPress dashboard for our clients?
Redesigning and building a client’s website comes with its ups and downs. If you’ve ever had an agency work with your website in the past, you too may be familiar with these particular challenges: overwriting content, queries getting lost in chaotic inboxes, admin errors – the list goes on.
We reviewed these issues and came up with a simple solution that helps our clients have an improved experience during the project and beyond. Here are some examples that explain what we mean.
Typical WordPress dashboard issues that drive you nuts
During web development and once a new site launches, these ongoing WordPress dashboard dilemmas for clients and our agency team fall into six main areas:
- Not user-friendly – the out-of-the-box WordPress dashboard is not very user-friendly as it displays far too much information. The dashboard doesn’t make clear what needs to be actioned by a client when they log in.
- Loss of content – this happens when multiple organisations make regular changes to data and content, leading to overwriting.
- Too many emails – typically, after rounds of maintenance and updates, there are a lot of emails with reports, and it’s hard to keep track of them all.
- Queries are lost – if clients need to report an error or issue with the site, these emails can get lost in cluttered inboxes.
- Not knowing how to use the new site – clients often aren’t sure how to maximise their website, especially if management is in the hands of someone inexperienced with the WordPress dashboard.
- When things go wrong – it is sometimes hard to determine who and what may have caused an issue when bugs are reported to us. Without a tracker, it makes issues harder to resolve.
We wanted to create a WordPress dashboard that is easy to use and provides clear guidance and value to a client. The goal is to assist the management of their website whilst keeping it straightforward and simple.
The Strafe Creative Welcome Dashboard
A cleanly designed, easy-to-use and transparent way for our WordPress clients to get to know their new site and manage it moving forward – an improved version of the current WordPress dashboard users are familiar with.
Every Strafe WordPress client will now have access to the Welcome Dashboard. Designed to address the issues highlighted and with the potential to offer many more features as it develops over time.
Here’s how we’ve tackled and conquered each challenge using a client-centric approach:
- Making it user-friendly – The new dashboard is clean, easy to navigate and contains tabs at the top so clients can easily switch between essential information and support.
- Stopping the loss of content – Through the use of a pop-up on this main dashboard, ‘Content Freezes’ can be applied with a flick of a switch instead of numerous email communications. This ensures anyone who logs in knows not to update content and stops any overwriting.
- Cutting down unnecessary emails – Website maintenance reports are now kept in one place on WordPress instead of clients receiving emails at the end of the month. The latest report is found as soon as you log in and view your WordPress dashboard.
- No queries are lost – A clean and easy-to-use support ticket system has been built into the “Support” tab. It requests all relevant information and can be submitted from the dashboard as you experience the issue. This then links straight into the Strafe Creative project management system to ensure a prompt resolution.
- Easy ways to learn how to use your site – We’ve built a fantastic resource area that helps clients resolve some issues themselves without relying on us to teach each user. This not only speeds up business processes but will also help new staff get to grips with the website. These tutorials will be updated regularly and grow to be an excellent resource for Strafe clients.
- Troubleshoot with ease – We’ve also included greater visibility of activities to help make troubleshooting much more efficient. This means less downtime or periods of time with errors. Plus, clients can see when we’ve updated plugins and carried out regular maintenance on the site – this provides transparency for both the client and us.
Finally, after many requests from clients to assist with pop-up cookie maintenance, we created our own easy-to-use cookie pop-up section. There are so many third-party plugins, and it’s difficult to guarantee the quality. The Strafe cookie pop-up allows our clients to quickly amend and customise these settings without the need to find and update an extra plugin.
Will there be future development for other platforms? Yes!
Whilst this dashboard is only available for WordPress clients currently, we hope to expand and build out equivalent versions, where required, for our Shopify and Craft CMS clients too. We have big plans for the resource area and regularly update it with new videos and guides to ensure our clients can get the most out of their new Strafe Creative websites.
If you’re a current client, please feel free to let us know what you’d like to see in your Welcome Dashboard, as we’re continuously improving it!
You can learn more about WordPress CMS in some of our other content:
- WordPress vs Craft CMS – which should you choose?
- What are the disadvantages of using WordPress?
- Which intranet shall I choose? Sharepoint or WordPress?
If you’re interested in exploring the options for your WordPress website, get in touch using the Project Planner.
