Website Retheme
Ready Ref
The brief was to change everything under the hood and nothing the customer sees. A 2012 build migrated to a modern theme, matched pixel for pixel on desktop, and made responsive for the first time.
- 2012 to 2019 same client, second engagement on the same site
- Client
- Ready Ref
- Where
- Nationwide
- Services
- Responsive Wordpress Site
- Model
- 2005
- Service
- Website Design
- Sector
- Commerce & Retail
About Ready Ref
Ready Ref is a nationwide trusted expert and provider of sports referee needs. They have maintained the officials’ standard for on-field timing since 1979 and continue to be the primary provider of referee and game timers across the US. Ready Ref is a property of Grimm Scientific, Inc., serving hydrotherapy equipment on a national level to collegiate and state sports teams.
The business challenge
In 2012, Paradynamix redesigned and branded the Ready Ref site, setting up their ecommerce portal and site map as per our client’s requests. Since then, the site has been primarily handled by the Grimm Scientific team with Paradynamix continuing to host the site on our servers. Now, in 2019, their team wanted the site brought up to date, allowing for an easier managing experience to make content changes to the site, while maintaining the exact same look.
What we did
Our plan was to migrate the site content onto a new site theme with a modern and friendly content management experience. Not only would this new theme afford an easier ability to make changes, it also has mobile responsiveness built in, something the old theme lacked. Through the use of custom CSS and side by side comparisons every step of the way, we planned to recreate the same look and feel in a modern theme.
What happened
The old site theme, while cutting edge at the time, had fallen out of upkeep and used a lot of shortcode and HTML to create the custom formatting. As we migrated content into the new theme, we cleaned up the site code so as not to interfere with the new framework it was set in. Using the newer, modern site theme, we tailored the desktop experience to be an exact match of the original setup. Alongside that, we set up the site to react to tablet and mobile appropriately, stripping out background elements that interfere with legibility for smaller screens. This created a new clean and accessible experience for mobile users to complement the same familiar desktop experience they already had.