Making Space for Sand is a website to represent a project encouraging more sustainable use and development of the coastal fringe to allow for a more natural, ecosystem approach to coastal management where traditional coastal protection is not possible. They are an environmental project which is funded by DEFRA.
The Goal
Making Space for Sand came to us for a brand new website to signpost people to find out more about the project. They needed a design based on a set of pre-existing brand guidelines designed by the council, with pages housing information on the project and a way for people to sign up to a newsletter, plus a way to contact the team at Making Space for Sand.
What Did We Do?
First, we focused on creating the wireframe of the site, which shows where all the elements on each page of the site are going to go. This allowed us to agree with the client the layout of pages such as the homepage, before we moved on to the design. We had a meeting to discuss the wireframe and worked with the client during this meeting and also via email afterwards to make changes until they were happy with the layout.
After the wireframe was agreed we moved on to the design stage, and created a few initial options using the brand guidelines the client had provided, plus conversations with them on what kind of look and feel they were looking for, and who their audience was.
One of the challenges of the design of this project was the Locations pages, which are a set of pages holding information on each coastal location. These pages sometimes had just a small amount of information, and sometimes had a lot, and we needed a set structure for displaying this that looked good even when a lot of the sections were removed. Initially we designed the Locations pages with all the potential information displaying, and then experimented with removing sections to see how this would affect the flow of the page. After some work, we came up with a layout that would allow complete flexibility, and still make sense and have a strong impact.
During the design process we had several meetings with the client, and exchanged version updates via email, until the client was happy with the end result. We then set about building the website itself, using WordPress in order to give the client complete control over their own website content and the ease of updating pages that they would need.
Making Space for Sand also wanted an interactive map on their Locations page, allowing people to click each area they were interested in, loading a page with more details. We used a WordPress plugin for this map, after researching the best options for the client in terms of functionality.
Final touches were the newsletter signup integration with Mailchimp and links to the client’s Social Media channel, and the website was ready to go.
It’s Time To Launch
As this website was brand new and housed on a new domain, launch was a simpler task than some and this client didn’t need any SEO transfer work to maintain their previous rankings. After completing our Quality Control processes and receiving sign-off from the client, we launched the website on its new domain and did some final checks to ensure everything was running smoothly.
After we confirmed the website was live, the client was able to post their Social Media posts to publicise it and bring in its first new visits. Overall this project went very well, and we’re very happy to have provided a website that looks and functions exactly as the client hoped – and supports an excellent project for our coastal spots at the same time.
If you’re interested in seeing their new site and have a little look around for yourself you can see it here.