Chichester Harbour Conservancy

Business Description

Chichester Harbour Conservancy approached Strawberrysoup over 6 months ago to assist them in redesigning and rebuilding their existing website which they felt was out of date.

The Conservancy's duty is the conservancy, maintenance and improvement of the Chichester Harbour and the Amenity Area for recreation and leisure, nature conservation and the natural beauty. The Conservancy is the statutory Harbour Authority and is responsible for the safety of navigation, the regulation of moorings, works and dredging, enforcement of harbour byelaws and the collection of dues and charges.

Project Description

The overall goal was to redesign the entire aesthetics of the website to give it a more up to date, professional look and feel. Once this was done we then were required to rebuild the website with the same functionality as the old website with the aim of making the site easier to navigate and use.

As the statutory Chichester Harbour Authority, the website is used by many users with differing requirements and levels of computer knowledge. The website had to be built to ensure key information could be found quickly and easily by all key users.

The site also had to integrate into a number of third party websites to allow up to date information to be pulled live in the new Conservancy site. This integration was going to help keep the site updated with key information without the need for administrator integration.

Solution

The end result has already generated some very positive feedback from users. The customisable homepage that allows users to structure their own personal homepage and the dynamically updated weather and tide information gives returning visitors vital updates in real time. The integration of dynamic oversize image headers provides new users with the visual impact required to give them a feel for the area and the JavaScript navigation option allows the website to stay detailed, but with a consistent and tidy structure.

An new page integrated gallery (http://www.conservancy.co.uk/page/Facilities/317/) allows Conservancy admin to upload images onto pages without having to resize images and an embedded JQuery plugin animation tool allows users to enlarge images to a more suitable size without having to navigate away from the page they are on.

With ongoing monthly support and consultancy, the new Conservancy website will continue to improve and develop in the months to come. New functionality is now being added to improve services for it's users.

website: http://www.conservancy.co.uk