From experience, we at Aeon Blu have learned that turnkey solutions result in happy clients.

florida school of holistic living

 

challenge

Emily Ruff and the Florida School of Holistic Living approached Aeon Blu with some particular needs for their website redesign. The school not only wanted to showcase the work they've been involved in but they wanted an easy to navigate website where students can register for classes online. To add to the complexities, they wanted to be able to offer discounted prices for people who registered for more than one class. And finally, due to the frequency of course changes and offerings, the school wanted to be able to update the site without having to depend on their web developers.

 

 

process

Aeon Blu took Florida School of Holistic Living's challenge and began with a series of discovery meetings with Emily. As the school's director, Emily had direct contact with her board of directors and had come prepared to support our team to reach the organization's goals. The school was busy in the process of re-designing their logo, expanding their physical location, and beginning the long awaited community garden project. There was a lot of activity and we wanted to capture the dynamic nature of the organization into an eye catching web site design. We knew the staff at the school had some reasonable skills when it came it understanding and implementing web based information systems and we helped to establish a non-profit conscious hosting service and suitable domain names for the site. After meeting in our office several times, Aeon Blu's designers also visited the school to further understand the needs and the environment in which our client worked. We approached this project in several phases. Phase one was the creative design: how the site will look and the general wireframes of the content map. Phase two began the admin interface development and the incorporation of the photo gallery, calendar, and interactive features. Phase three, which is in current development, will incorporate online registration and payment for courses.

 

 

result

With regard to the design of the site, we quickly determined that a series of three icons should be developed to delineate the three areas of focus described in the school's mission statement; Natural Arts, Spiritual Arts, and Sustainable Living. We later incorporated the same iconic look for the new organic food co-op. Once all the design features were in place, we fleshed out the content with additional information pages. With constant feedback and input from the client, we then created a user-friendly data base interface where the school's staff and volunteers could enter their course offerings. With a single database entry or edit - the listing is placed or updated in as many designated places throughout the website as the client cares to utilize. When any change is made to the course offering or to the description it simultaneously updates anywhere it appears on the site. We then employed Google checkout and Google calendar, integrated into the site design to maintain the active social and events of the school and to accept donations online. As we enter into phase three of the development of Florida School for Holistic Living's website, we are pleased by all of the positive feedback we've received thus far from the client and their students.