Success stories.
Clarke Energy.
For this success story we will be using one of our existing clients, Clarke Energy. Clarke Energy are a global renewable energy company, based in Knowsley near Liverpool, UK. Clarke Energy have offices world-wide in countries such as Australia, India, France and Nigeria. Branches undertook the design of their first web site some four years ago and the site has served them well in that time. However, the rapid growth of Clarke Energy into a global company required a radical re-think about the functionality and presentation of the web site. One of the things Clarke Energy were most keen on was the ability to edit content in the site themselves - quickly and easily - more on that later.
The
brief for the new web site was to build on the strong foundations
of the existing web site, in terms of search engine friendliness
and ease of use, while increasing its scope to encompass all
aspects of the Clarke Group worldwide. The new design needed
to reflect the global presence of Clarke Energy and its role
as a key player in the renewable energy business. As a result
of this the site would be naturally quite large in size and require
a good, consistent navigation method so visitors would not get
lost.
How we achieved it.
First
off, much thought was put into the actual look and feel of the
web site in order to make it stand out from the crowd. Much work
was also put into the actual mechanics of the web site at this
point in order for it to be easily navigable and expandable in
the future. Having studied in detail the brief from Clarke themselves,
we prepared a comprehensive appraisal - highlighting the positive
aspects of the old web site as well as it's shortcomings and
how we would deal with them. Our proposal and new design firmly
hit the nail on the head and achieved a resounding 'we like this
design - a lot' from the board. Success.
Construction of the new web site.
In order for us to start the web site, we need content. Fortunately for us, Clarke Energy were already on the case and were preparing some of the text for the web site in advance. They also had a comprehensive photo library that we could use. Construction of the web site started quickly as we were on a tight deadline to get the new web site up and running.
As with the construction of any web site, there is tweaking to be done as the site begins to take shape. The Clarke Energy web site was no exception. Fortunately there really wasn't that much to tweak so construction was completed - albeit ever so slightly behind schedule.
Site wide editing was enabled courtesy of Macromedia Contribute - an easy to use content management system that allows web site owners (or a designated editing team) quick web site editing without having to learn any HTML. For Clarke Energy this was essential as one of the shortcomings we identified on the old web site was that it wasn't updated quite as often as it could have been. This gave Clarke Energy complete content management control, in less time than it would take to 'phone and ask us to make changes to the site! Clarke Energy are busy people and they needed a quick way to get in there and change stuff with a minimum of fuss.
Job done.
Well, not quite. Clarke MD, Jim Clarke had the idea of having a rather nifty 'counter' on the home page of the new web site. The counter would show how much energy Clarke had generated globally since the company started till now and would add up every second. The task was speedily handled by our Flash scripting genius and duly implemented on their new web site. Job done and signed off.
Take a look at the finished Clarke Energy website.