The Challenge
Shanti Sadan, a charity teaching traditional non-dual yoga philosophy (Advaita Vedanta), was running on an old, non-responsive website. The organisation held a large catalogue of books, journal issues, and audio and video teaching material, but sold and fulfilled it almost entirely by hand, with orders taken and posted manually. They needed a fully responsive rebuild with an information architecture that could serve visitors ranging from complete newcomers to established practitioners, plus a proper commerce layer to automate fulfilment.
The Outcome
Delivered a fully responsive site that automated what had previously been entirely manual book and journal fulfilment. The relationship extended beyond the initial build into an ongoing monthly retainer. The live site today still runs a WooCommerce bookstore, an actively publishing journal, a dedicated video section, and an events section, consistent with the original scope.
The Approach
Ran a genuine content audit of the legacy site, cataloguing every page by content type, ownership, quality, and value to both visitors and the organisation, before designing the new structure. Worked directly with the client to define measurable success criteria (traffic, journal subscriptions, book purchases, video views) and installed analytics on the existing site early to establish a baseline. Sketched early audience personas collaboratively with the client to keep the new IA anchored to real visitor intent, and worked through a tiered content-access model for journal content (free, email-gated, full paying-subscriber archive). Designed and built a new responsive site around a newcomer-friendly top-level IA (Theory, Practice, Purpose, alongside Books, Journal, Media, Events), with a WooCommerce commerce layer: book sales with an integrated shipping calculator, and a subscription model spanning both physical and digital journal copies. Later added hosted video sessions, including live-streamed practice sessions, and an events calendar. The relationship continued afterward into an ongoing monthly digital marketing retainer.
