Arts and Crafts Group
We incorporated the feedback we received during the in-class review of our redesigned vision of the Sarah Maker website and made the following changes to make navigating even easier for the beginning crocheter (and knitter!):
In our first iteration of the redesigned crochet landing page, we had links to both a “get started” page and a “beginner tutorials” page. A beginner might not know where to go first, so the page has been redesigned with a large crochet image (not linked to anything) to establish the page identity and all the beginner information is combined into one link.
We have included a version of what this new all-in-one beginner crochet page might look like. Instead of a mishmash of hyperlinks hidden among paragraphs of text on one very long page (as is currently found at https://sarahmaker.com/how-to-crochet/, the different instructions have been divided into different pages with highly visible buttons. In addition to the very first lessons about materials and how to hold your hook and yarn, there are links to each of the basic stitches a beginner needs to learn. We have also included a search bar for the crochet section so that a user can find what they are looking for even if they are not familiar with the terminology they see in the buttons.
If a user uses the buttons and starts from the beginning, they will be taken to a new page that shows the instructions for each section. These pages also have “previous” and “next” buttons at the bottom (as appropriate) so that the user can easily navigate from one set of instructions to the next, as they are laid out in the order that a complete beginner should go through them. The pages for the first two links (“what materials do you need” and “how to hold a hook and yarn”) are shown below.
Since Sarah Maker also includes knitting patterns (and her original layout is just as confusing as it is for crochet) we also redesigned the knitting landing page to match the crochet page. This will add a level of consistency for the user as they navigate through the site. The rest of the knitting section would be structured similarly to the redesigned crochet section.
Finally, in our previous post, we had the layout of the redesigned homepage, but we hadn’t had a chance to add pictures and colors to make it mesh with the new craft-specific landing pages. The new iteration includes images of each craft as well as inspiring words to get the user excited to discover new crafty activities.
We hope that our redesigned version of the Sarah Maker website will encourage visitors to spend more time on the site, not because they are frustrated by trying to find the information they want, but because they find it a welcoming and easy-to-navigate resource that they can come back to again and again. The new organization and functionalities should impress both current users and those who are coming to the site for the first time!