Custom web design and WordPress development for Canada’s premier awards – The JUNOS.

The history of the JUNO Awards began with the creation of the RPM Gold Leaf Awards in 1964 to honour Canadian musicians from coast-to-coast. Rebranded decades later as The JUNOS, the awards have served as a platform to recognize Canada’s most talented musicians and recording artists, as well as a celebration of Canadian culture and creativity.

CARAS invited our Toronto Web Design Agency to support the JUNO Awards in 2018 with the design and development of the 2018 JUNO Fan Choice live voting website used during the awards show broadcast to collect more than 200,000 live votes.

Following the success of our shared efforts, our work continued together throughout the year as we delivered some software and user experience design updates to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame website in preparation for the 2019 JUNO Awards nomination announcements.

In the spring of 2019, we finally kicked off the long-awaited website design overhaul of the JUNO Awards website and awards archive.

Establishing Website Design Goals

Website architecture and user experience design – the existing JUNOS website had survived many awards seasons on the back of yearly patches and incremental updates to an ageing WordPress platform. 2019 offered our Toronto Web Designers ample time to dissect and understand how the website was utilized previously and how CARAS (the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences) planned to use the website going forward. This opportunity would allow our web strategists to devise a complete website architecture audit and overhaul to enhance the user experience.
Responsive website user interface design – after the onboarding process, one of the first points in our discussion with clients is all about what is not working in their current website. In this case, the previous JUNOS website was extremely image-heavy, causing performance issues as well as general confusion among users trying to navigate the website. Conversations such as this are fundamental in establishing goals and benchmarks from which we can measure the success of a project afterword.
Custom WordPress development – the JUNOS website featured nearly 8,000 pages of nominations and awards content that was carefully tagged and stored in a database. With some intense analysis and careful web development strategy, our WordPress developers devised a method to transition the extensive database into the new website without data loss or significant content entry challenges. Developing the new website on the WordPress platform would allow for a seamless transition into the new website as well as offer the future-forward flexibility website owners come to expect when overhauling a website today.

Our Web Design Process

Project Discovery

Our discovery phase for the new JUNOS website was unique in that the website itself housed nearly 40 years of archival awards data and information that had to be treated as Canadian gold – not referring to maple syrup here. To transition this historical data into the new website, our Toronto WordPress developers spent weeks analyzing and dissecting the inner workings of the existing site and database. This early research ensured that we could design a new website and WordPress backend that would properly reference and utilize the decades of information at the core of the website.

On the user interface design front, our Toronto web designers analyzed the current user experience against the historical data available and compared this against other popular award websites such as the Oscars, Grammys and Country Music Awards.

Web Design Strategy

Relying on our professional web design strategy experience, our team moved ahead with the next phase of the JUNOS website redesign. Our first step was establishing a revamped site map detailing the navigational flow and structure of the new website. The strategy phase is where our web design projects start to come alive and offer a more comprehensive view for our clients.

With the approval of the newly designed site map and navigational flow, the JUNO Awards marketing team plunged headfirst into the project taking ownership of critical decisions for the future of the website.

The next stepping stone in our website design strategy was wireframing. Wireframing can sometimes be a real catalyst in a website design project as this exercise provides a virtual look at the information architecture within the new website design to the client. Our web designers rely on a state-of-the-art prototyping tool that provides an authentic contextual experience for our clients to review the proposed wireframe designs and make critical decisions without the distraction of polished UI design.

Wireframing is an essential tool for our Toronto web design company as it provides the opportunity to quickly and efficiently sandbox design ideas saving our clients time and money. Wireframe design also ensures that the creative website design phase flows naturally and that client-requested revisions are often minimal, which prevents the concept design from straying too far from our intentions.

“Parachute is a real pleasure to work with. We’ve thrown a few projects their way with limited time and budget, and they’ve been able to make magic happen. I’d recommend their work to anyone looking for a reliable web team with a creative eye.”

Danielle Sanford,

Digital Media Manager, The JUNO Awards

Website Design for the Entertainment Industry

Following approval of the shared web design strategy work, our Toronto WordPress designers quickly change gears and transition from UX design to UI design mode. During the UI design, or User Interface design phase, our creative designers focus on creating a modern user interface design over the final wireframe designs. The first high-fidelity concept design interfaces are also shared with the project participants using the same cloud-based prototyping tool used for wireframing. This practice again provides all parties with a truly contextual look at the new web design in both the traditional “click-based” desktop environment as well as the more contemporary “touch-based” mobile environment.

Creating this true-to-form experience provides our clients with the opportunity to digest, question, and eventually approve our custom website design work. This immersive experience in our encompassing creative plan eliminates unnecessary rounds of design revisions or last-minute design oversights that can single-handedly ruin a website design project. In the grand scheme of things, our website design process provides the best avenue to keep our web design projects moving forward on schedule and budget.

Mobile Responsive Website Design

Access to everything on the go...

Mobile-friendly Entertainment

Once CARAS (The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) reviewed and approved the new desktop website design for the JUNO Awards, our web designers went to work creating the responsive web design and adapting the polished interface design to adapt to the vast array of mobile devices at hand today. This mobile design practice is crucial to contemporary website design to ensure that the final artwork adapts and responds to devices users can take on the go, as well as ensuring that the new website meets Google’s “mobile-first” ranking algorithm. Essentially, our goal is to guarantee the website hits the ground running on launch day.

Custom WordPress Web Development

After finalizing the brand new website design for the JUNOS website, our Toronto WordPress Developers took the lead on the project. They layered in the front-end development that website users see and interact with. While our web design team steered their way through the creative design phase, our developers began work on the complex backend of the website. This staggered approach to custom WordPress Development allows our team to move efficiently through the project and offers a more in-depth insight into functionality and technical solutions. At the same time, we’re still ironing out the final design.

The content entry phase was unique in this website design project as we created a custom tool to migrate most of the 7,000-plus pages from the original website database into the new system – a solution we established early on in the project to ensure a smooth transition. Following content entry, our quality assurance specialist combed through the beta website to smooth out any last-minute wrinkles before migrating the website to a staging server to prepare for launch.

Interactive Timeline

One of the coolest new features we’ve rolled out for the JUNO Awards to celebrate their 50th anniversary is an interactive timeline feature baked right into the custom WordPress CMS. Encompassing both the desktop and mobile environment the user is immersed in a three-dimensional experience as the scroll. Instead of scrolling up, down left or right, the user actually scrolls forward through the beautiful new statuette design to commemorate 50 years of JUNOS history. Along their journey, the viewer travels through time stopping at key moments and milestones in the rich history of the awards.

Website Deployment

Deploying a new website is a bit like launching a rocket into space. There are multiple systems involved, team members on both sides of the project needed at the ready, and a tense moment of silence as the countdown sequence runs down. Launch day for the JUNO Awards was no different. Not only were we launching a massive new website, including more than 7,000 pages, but we also pushed the website to our preferred managed WordPress hosting platform. To make the launch day run smoothly, we staged the website on its new home for a week before the official launch. This practice allows our quality assurance people to fine-tune the website for its new home as many websites behave a little differently from server to server. After a week of thorough testing, all systems were “go for launch”, and the new website rolled out to the public just in time for the announcement of the 2020 JUNO Award Nominees. Within the first 24 hours, the website experienced more than 100,000 hits and passed with flying colours.

WordPress Training and SEO Best Practices Review

Shortly after deployment, we scheduled our CMS training and overview of SEO best practices before officially handing over the keys to the new website. This screencast is recorded and provided to our clients for reference as they take over their new website. The training session is also a great way to wrap up a project and address any final questions before taking the training wheels off.

For the next two months, our team monitors the website daily and takes care of software updates as needed to ensure the website is operating smoothly.

About Parachute Design

Parachute Design has been creating professional website design for high profile websites since 2003. Our Toronto web designers have the experience and creative mindset to deliver fully custom designed websites to meet the unique needs of every client. To get a free web design estimate or learn more about our Toronto web design agency call 416-901-8633 or complete our online proposal planner.

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