Website Development for Care Development East
This website development project for Care Development East started with a series of interviews to establish the clients requirements. This included, not only the proposed content of the site, but also who in the organisation was responsible for updates, their experience with CMS systems and any additional functionality needed. They wanted to bring a new fresh, clean design to their online activity and provide new tools to allow them to provide more training opportunities to a wider audience.
We decided to build a bespoke site but use WordPress as the platform. Care Development East had knowledge of the WordPress CMS which would mean any training time would be kept to a minimum.
Once we had established the content we produced sitemaps showing the information architecture. Production of wireframes were then designed to show the information hierarchy and proposed layout.
Once the wireframes had been approved by all departments, we produced a series of flat website designs of the homepage and key pages. The design utilises a lot of white space giving the design the fresh clean look we were looking for. The principle information is contained in a single, large top navigation and any lesser navigation is retained in the footer.
As part of the website development we needed to tweak the Care Development East corporate identity design. The brokerage used a series of established purple colours as part of their identity. We felt while designing the website we needed a new accent colour to bring the deign to life and help highlight important information. We experimented with a number of designs and all agreed the teal green was the perfect accompaniment to the purple.
Care Development East Training Exchange
One of the challenges was to add the required functionality to the site as quickly and efficiently as possible. As WordPress access various plugins, we wanted to use these as much as possible rather than code our own. A good example of this was the Training Exchange added to the site. This area needed to display a number of specific training opportunities allowing the care sector to share training courses. In order to achieve this we sourced an excellent plugin designed to manage classroom bookings and repurpose it to use as Training Exchange. This kept costs to down to just the plugin, implementation and design. This area was then given its own logo and identity design adding to its value.
Suffolk Training and Course Providers
Another section which required additional functionality was the Training Provider and Short Course Provider section. This area allows providers from Suffolk to list the training they provide. It is a section which gives care professionals a simple list of all relevant providers to contact when organising mandatory and additional training for their staff. This again utilised a WordPress plugin, in this case a portfolio plugin to give the Suffolk Brokerage a quick cost effective solution.
Website Development from a Suffolk Freelance Website Designer
Do you have a similar website design project? This is one of a number of projects I have completed and demonstrates how I can discuss with you to find the best solution. This is done without confusion and with a total understanding of the skill sets of those involved. It also shows how we can develop an excellent site without a massive budget by using existing software. If you would like to see any other examples, including those completed on behalf of agencies or marketing companies (which I don’t show on this site), then please contact me.