Tiny Shiny Home's general style was mostly there as we've helped them refine and re-align for several years. It's clean and simple with a mix of modern and retro typefaces. Up to this point they've mainly used gray and blue as their main colors, but we expanded and added a 3rd color so that things wouldn't get too repetitive.
The most important thing about this homepage, though was the content and flow. Tiny Shiny Home really wanted to make things more personal so we added images and a description at the top so people would know it's a family affair.
Recent articles are still important since they post often, but they also wanted a way to really call out their most popular and useful posts. A tabbed area near the bottom lets the visitor choose what kind of content they're looking for.
After that, a big call out for their Airstream renovation project and a call to action at the bottom for subscribers help grow their tribe.
Finally - and most importantly - they added a contact form with an official request for anyone that wants to work with them. This was a big step, but it's already paid off with a company offering to send a product for review. Sweet!
At it's heart, Tiny Shiny Home is a blog and making sure that articles are fast, clean and easy to read are hugely important. Text is kept at a manageable line-length for legibility and pictures are large and clear. There's even a locations feature that lets them list spots the mention in the article.
Keeping with the personalization, they added author bios to the end and decided to forgo a bunch of sharing icons and options as most of that happens on social networks anyway. Instead large colorful callouts to other related articles populate the end of a post before the comments are visible.
We hope this encourages users to continue to read on the site instead of leaving immediately to share what they've just read. Long tail, right?
Tiny Shiny Home started on WordPress, moved to ExpressionEngine and finally as of the latest version is on Craft CMS. Why? Live Preview publishing and the Matrix content blocks field. Those two things set Craft head and shoulders above anyone else in the publishing department.
Creating and sharing content is now fun and easy, which is important when you're publishing on the side. The less friction the better.
Finally, we went to great lengths to make sure that the custom design worked well on all screen sizes. No pre-built frameworks here - Everything is tweaked by hand to look great.