Erfolgsakademie Baden: a relaunch on a custom WordPress theme

Our brief: concept, design, copy and technical build; the corporate identity was a given. At the heart of the concept is a conversion-focused homepage that leads step by step to the free initial consultation, plus sub-pages per service. Three audiences had to be served – professionals and managers at a career crossroads, companies dealing with staffing and change, organisers booking talks or seminars – along with a plain explanation of AVGS and BAFA funding.

Rather than a site builder or an off-the-shelf theme, we programmed the WordPress theme “Erfolgsakademie Baden” specifically for the client; it implements the corporate identity in blue-black, petrol, mustard yellow, pink and PT Sans. The homepage leads from the opening question “Bin ich hier richtig?” (Am I in the right place?) through services, funding, certificates and partner logos, the founders, client testimonials and FAQs to the contact form. Six sub-pages – Für Dich (for professionals), Für Unternehmen (for companies), Vorträge & Seminare (talks and seminars), Förderung (funding), Über uns (about us) and Kontakt (contact) – go into more depth; imprint and privacy pages complete the site.

Everything that would normally call for plugins is built into the theme itself. The cookie dialogue separates essential cookies from statistics; Google Analytics 4 (Google's visitor statistics) is provided for as the statistics service and loads only after consent. The “Cookie-Einstellungen” link in the footer lets visitors change their choice at any time. The contact form is protected against spam by a honeypot (a hidden field that only automated scripts fill in) and sends through an authenticated mailbox on the client's own domain (an e-mail account with login rather than anonymous dispatch). The PT Sans typeface is served from the client's own server, so there is no call to Google Fonts.

We wrote the copy as well – in the informal “Du” form used throughout the site. The main visuals – the hero image (the large header image on the homepage), the service images and the founders' portraits – are delivered as WebP (a space-saving image format); content fades in on scroll and key figures count up. A skip link (a jump link straight to the content) and ARIA labels (hidden text labels for screen-reading software) on navigation and controls support keyboard and screen reader use. WordPress installs theme updates via GitHub sync straight from the code repository (the versioned store of the source code on GitHub).