Connexions BDP
Overview
Connexions Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole have a lot of information that they need to make available to people aged 13 to 19. Much of this information was previously getting lost in a site that was both difficult to navigate and difficult to find on search engines The site was also completely inaccessible. Solid State Group re-developed the site to include a high level of personalised content in an easy to navigate, completely accessible, content managed, fresh and funky new site
Website
Background
The Connexions BDP website was originally created with a number of animated characters to appeal to the younger audience. The central theme of the website was the Jurassic period as the rocks of Dorset and east Devon cover 180 million years of the Earth's history. It represents a walk through time and shows the evolution of species from fish to dinosaurs to mammals. The main character for the site was a pink saber-tooth tiger with other supporting prehistoric characters.
In early 2006 Connexions BDP decided it was time for an upgrade to the site mainly for usability and accessibility reasons and so released a tender for the redevelopment.
Initially Solid State Group presented Connexions BDP with a full current website review which uncovered a number of serious issues including:
- Poor usability and navigation due to flash based menus and use of frames
- Negligible search engine rankings from frames and old table based templates with flash menus
- Completely inaccessible based on the W3C WCAG guidelines
- Lack of fresh relevant content for the target audience leading to low usage
Objectives
- Increase visibility through popular search engines
- Implement accessibility compliance for entire site
- Improve usability and ease of navigation
- Maintain fresh content by using a cost effective accessible content management system
- Provide up to date job postings pulled in from an external source
- Provide interactive tools such as polls, forums and quizzes that increase customer retention
Solution
Based on the initial report, Solid State Group advised that an initial phase for the website might be to keep the Jurassic theme and concentrate on fixing the usability, search rankings and accessibility by redeveloping the templates in XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2. However after some initial discussion with the client and subsequent testing with the target audience it soon became clear that the Jurassic theme and characters were giving the site a look and feel that appealed to a much younger audience than expected. It was therefore decided to overhaul the theme completely to attract a much wider segment of the target audience.
Solid State Group was then charged with designing an innovative, fresh and young design to re-launch their site. After a number of design concepts, one concept was singled out as the new look and feel for the Connexions BDP website. The new concept centered on personalising the look and feel to the people visiting the site. Using the WebDeck accessible content management system and it's versatile tagging feature, background images
About Solid State Group
Solid State Group is a content management, web applications and services consultancy which was founded out of a desire to provide solutions which were more time and cost-efficient.
Leveraging the managing partners experience in the IT consulting, financial and marketing sectors, Solid State Group has built a strong reputation for robust products that can be rapidly and effectively implemented across a broad range of industry sectors.
For more information please visit www.solidstategroup.com or call 0845 838 2163