www.yorkshirerockinghorses.co.uk

Having the opportunity to work with a business as niche as this one is as rare as, well, the proverbial rocking horse poo – so I was very much looking forward to starting the redesign of this site.

The business is based in the next town along from mine, Hebden Bridge, and the owner Steven Bulcock is a very talented craftsman and super nice guy who’s been making beautiful, Victorian style, hand-carved rocking horses for over 30 years.

It’s a “big ticket” purchase and it was interesting to hear about the type of people who buy them and their often very personal reasons for doing so.

One thing that struck me immediately was the purchaser was never really just “buying a rocking horse”, but investing in a beautiful piece of furniture and an heirloom which would likely be in their family for generations to come.

The lack of good quality images on the existing site highlighted a priority, so I arranged a local photographer I’d worked with before to come along, on what turned out to be a lovely autumnal afternoon.

The resulting images are seen throughout the site including the ‘Slider Gallery’ in the Home Page header – and (most of the images) on the Our Horses page.

As this is for more of a tradfitional product I gave the website more traditional feel by creating it in a ‘Boxed Layout’, with borders at the sides. This is the first ‘responsive’ site I have done like this, although it only displays this way when viewed on a larger desktop screen. When viewed on a tablet or mobile device it is still displayed at ‘fullwidth’ as I feel this gives the best user experience.

In keeping with the traditional style, the images in the main body of the Home Page show in black and white as you scroll through the page. However, if you stop and hover over them then they not only expand slightly in size but change to full colour.

The sizing and prices information was on a PDF document on the previous site so I added this to a regular page on the new website which provides a much better experience for the visitor, particularly for those on mobile devices.

Click here to see the website live on your current device – and please do get in touch if I may be able to help with improving the performance of your website, or growing your business in any way.