The previous iteration of the site was performing well in commercial terms but it hadn’t seen any noteworthy work on the overall look and feel for quite some time. Trends and user expectations move on pretty quickly and the time was right to take stock of the site content, the current business goals and see what improvements we could make.
Working with the client, we identified a set of objectives for the work and these included:
- Refresh the site styles
- Bring the site into line with new branding guidelines
- Follow a minimal “less is more” approach
- Review the front-end code and performance
- Allow the web team to easily manage call to actions and featured content
Introducing the new styles and branding guidelines
We switched to using the brand’s principal typeface (Roboto Light) throughout the site and the use of the light weight immediately lent the site an elegant and sophisticated look — exactly what the brand wants to convey.
We also made sure that that site’s content blocks benefited from generous amounts of whitespace, allowing the content to breathe and contributing again to an elegant and high-end look and feel.
Another component that draws on the branding guidelines is the block colour background behind the leader text on each page. Here we use the brand light green for core content pages (for example, top level landing pages) and the brand salmon colour for all blog pages.
Making the most of the brand image assets and video
The client has developed a great library of brand assets and we wanted to give as much visual strength as possible to the hero images used on each page. The new hero section now contains only the page masthead (logo and navigation) plus the image itself and the page’s strapline. It’s clear, light and impactful — just what we wanted.
The client is also very much on board with using video within the hero section, and we are currently doing this on the home page and the real estate product landing page and the videos do a great job of communicating the offer and atmosphere of the resort products.
Full content management and a clean, lean front-end
This was a good opportunity to review the front-end and make sure that the site is performing well and providing a great, fast browsing experience for the users. We tidied up a few items and optimised some others, and the result is a very lean, fast site.
The back-end continues to provide the client with a total and sitewide control over the content and we’re looking forward to see how they grow the site over time.
Take a look at the new site or visit our portfolio for more project information.