Shape Magazine (or Shape) is a monthly fitness magazine started by Weider Publications in 1981, founded by Christine MacIntyre (a pioneer in women's free weight fitness) and became the #1 women's fitness magazine and was purchased by American Media (AMI) in 2002.
Workhabit was hired to migrate and update Shape as the platform was ready for a refresh, and we believed we could have a big impact on the user experience and traffic for the site.
Shape Magazine’s redesign and re-architecture brought to the table a very modular design during its initial build. All of the AMI sites that had been developed and released on the Global Platform had a very specific set of functionality and UX that was very different than Shape.com’s requirements. This presented a really cool set of challenges in determining the best way to introduce a different UX into a standardized platform which could be reused for future sites, without cluttering up the administrative features with too many customizable components. The word ‘clean’ could be heard in just about every conversation throughout the development lifecycle of the project.
One of the ways we overcame this hurdle was by introducing a very controllable taxonomy landing page layout. Since taxonomy drives nearly 100% of the site in this platform, having the ability to quickly change the rendering component of the page was invaluable. Administrators could choose between the default taxonomy term pages, or blank pages for more modular block placement, or even predefined lists of content, rendered in multiple formats.
Shape.com was a lot of work, and one of the tougher migrations we've had. But we successfully launched in 2011, and the client was elated with the work -- and traffic and user interaction increased significantly as a result of the redesign and speed enhancements.
