We have decided to revamp our website early this year as the previous theme was giving us some problems on Google Analytics advanced tracking and contact form customization to reduce spam. Besides, we are also launching Gapture Malaysia digital marketing blog, as content is king nowadays. Functionality and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) have been given higher priority over aesthetic in the revamp. In order to have a better understanding of the limit of WordPress and to identify a WordPress theme that we can stick to for upcoming projects, I have decided to handle this project myself, from researching for the WordPress theme that fits our needs to actual implementation of the website.
After much research, I have decided to give Headway Theme a try. The learning curve is rather steep, even with my programming background, but a lot of the learning is on HTML and CSS as they have changed a lot from the last time I did it. I have managed to find a lot of video tutorials online and that helped a lot. After tweaking and hacking it for a few weeks, I have managed to get this website up with the new layout as designed by our web designer. I have made the theme responsive so that users can view our website easily from their mobile devices.
We have also integrated advanced Google Analytics tracking features, including Social Interaction tracking, where Google Analytics track the traffic generated from the social sharing off our website. I managed to find a WordPress plugin from LunaMetrics to do this. Some of the other plugins installed are as followed:
- All in One SEO Pack
- Column Shortcodes
- Contact Form 7
- Contact Form 7 Honeypot - This plugin really help reduce the spams we received from "Contact Us" form
- Google XML Sitemaps
- SEO Friendly Images
- Sharebar
- Shortcodes Ultimate
- SlideDeck 2 Lite
- WordPress Meta Robots
We are monitoring our Google Analytics account closely to study where the traffic comes from and how users behave on our website. We are re-launching Google AdWords campaign once the dust has settled. The whole learning experience has been great and all these findings will definitely benefit our clients in upcoming projects.
p/s: This is how our website looked like before the revamp: