ABOUT

Established in 2005 by Gordon Laing, Cameralabs publishes in-depth reviews of the latest digital cameras. In-depth is a phrase that's used a lot on review sites, but for Cameralabs it's no exaggeration; reviews, covering every aspect of a camera's design and features, run into many thousands of words with a multitude of real-world test and sample images.

Though popular (camera Labs currently serves more than a million pages to over 300,000 unique visitors a month) the site's ageing design wasn't serving visitors in the best possible way. It didn't display well on mobile devices or high resolution displays, and the static design meant that preparing reviews for publication was a laborious and time-consuming process.

I redesigned cameralabs using WordPress and a modern responsive theme that displays the site content so that visitors can find the reviews they want and see high quality images regardless of whether they're browsing using a desktop computer, a laptop, tablet or a phone. With increasing numbers of visitors using mobile devices, this was a crucial element of the redesign.

The WordPress CMS makes light work of content preparation and production. Elements that are displayed in multiple locations need only be entered once, there's an easy to use ratings system, and a custom plugin automatically embeds sets of sample images from Flickr. Geotargetted affiliate links ensure that Cameralabs is able to capitalise on affiliate program revenue from its reader base across the globe.

As well as the client, the redesign has been enthusiastically received by regular Cameralabs visitors and will help to ensure that the site continues its success in an increasingly competitive online publishing environment.