Website Design & Development

Following the ​‘hacking’ of their previous Wordpress website, Transense came to us to re-build the website, and with it, their online reputation.

Our Google experts immediately began work on undoing the damage done by the Wordpress hack and advising the Transense team as to what steps they could take. Alongside this work, our design and development team began planning the site rebuild.

The previous website was built on a custom content management system (CMS) which, because of its limitations and unintuitive interface, became harder to manage over time. Although the custom CMS could theoretically be changed to suit the needs of the content and its editors, making changes relied on the sole developer. This meant changes were subject to his availability and costs, and meant that future changes would be problematic if the developer was no longer available.

In light of these discussions, we suggested Craft CMS, a commercially available CMS with a large community of developers and support. The flexibility and framework of the CMS would allow us to expand and iterate on the website to keep pace with the evolving product line.

Building on our design teams rebranding work, the website was crafted to reflect the new direction and more modern aesthetic of the Oxford Optronix brand. We worked on improving the structure, hierarchy and legibility of the complex product information for both mobile and desktop environments.

Product information and documentation, previously on multiple domains and CMS’s, were combined and can now be managed from single place, ensuring consistency and maintainability.

The rebuild presented an opportunity to analyse and improve the website’s search engine optimisation. Our in-house Google experts carried out an audit of the site and produced a strategy for growth. These suggestions were implemented into the build stage in combination with significant performance increases.

The initial audit of the old website uncovered some key areas of frustration for both customers and the Hot Tub Studio (HTS) team. Firstly the website was very slow to load, which was not only frustrating to users but was very likely hurting the search engine visibility. Secondly, built on a plethora of WordPress plugins and restrictive templates, the website was unreliable for customers and hard to manage/​update for the team. Finally, the dated aesthetic of the website didn’t reflect the premium products and service that Hot Tub Studio offer.

After outlining the goals for the rebuild, we began the process by restructuring and reformatting the product information to make it easier to navigate and understand. Working with the extensive product knowledge of the HTS team, we imported the real product information into Craft CMS so we could design and prototype the new site with accurate information. Designing and building the site in parallel allowed us to iterate quickly and share our progress regularly. 

As we were also working on a re-brand (includ­ed new typog­ra­phy, images, colour palette, and cre­ation of a suite of icons & new logos), it was an ideal time to also redesign and rebuild the Sum-It website.

Build­ing on our design teams rebrand­ing work, the web­site was craft­ed to reflect the new direc­tion and more mod­ern aes­thet­ic of the refreshed Sum-It brand. For the site CMS we sug­gest­ed Craft CMS, a com­mer­cial­ly avail­able CMS with a large com­mu­ni­ty of devel­op­ers and sup­port. The flex­i­bil­i­ty and frame­work of the CMS would allow us to expand and iter­ate on the web­site to keep pace with a new product range that was planned for release in 2022.

Following the creation of their corporate website, Kingsley commissioned us to design and build their parts sales website to launch their e‑commerce business.

Stonebridge first came to us in 2011 looking for a new website that would provide easily accessible information about their complex press tool library and product range. We built a custom made content management system (CMS) that allowed them to upload, and update press tools, products and supplementary information, and also add news articles to the site.

The new website also ensured the Stonebridge brand was faithfully translated online and the right first impression created for new customers. To do this, Stonebridge utilised our other in-house services, commissioning design, photography and illustration. A bespoke set of illustrations and icons were created to add clarity to the technical diagrams that make up their online press tool library. And a photoshoot was undertaken to give insight into their facilities, team and production process.

CST Global provides both a custom foundry service, as well as a range of high-volume, standard laser products for the optical communications markets.

Our in-house design and development teams worked closely to design and build the website within a very tight time frame. Because the site is completely CMS driven, amendments to the pages and can be made instantly. 

After getting to know the Ultraflex product offering, we began mapping out the structure of the new site and planning the types of content needed to communicate the essential information. With a clear set of requirements established, we chose to work with a Craft CMS, a full-featured and flexible content management system that would compliment the planned structure and allow for future evolution.

Using our page builder (developed for Craft CMS), editors of the Ultraflex website were able to quickly assemble pages with a variety of different content types and pre-built components (images, slideshows, tables, text, quotes etc). These pages could then be easily categorised and grouped using Craft CMS’s intuitive category and relationship features.