Dawn from Rhopoint is one of our valued long term clients. She asked us to re-design their parent company website www.rhopoint.com. The new website was to contain more information about each of the subsidiary companies and encourage the user to click through to discover more.
Research phase
Customer relationships
We had an in depth meeting with Dawn prior to starting the re-design to discover her goals and requirements for the new website. This really helped us understand what she was looking for so we could combine Rhopoints needs with their customers’ experience.
Competitor research
We spent some time researching Rhopoints competitors, from large similar corporations to smaller individual companies to help us understand more about their industry and how they can stand out from the crowd.
Audience research
By dedicating some time to put together a number of profiles that represent their most common type of customers ensured we put the needs of the reader first.
Process
Sitemap
We mapped out where each page would go and in what order. Planning each page drives down the hierarchy and helps define a clear journey for potential customers. It also helps plan the website and gives direction.
Throughout the project, the map may change as things progress but it’s always good to have a plan to work to.
Wireframes
After finalising the sitemap, the next step in any web project is to create wireframes. These are very basic. No design or real text is used as they tend to distract from the main objective which is to decide the order of content and where images and text will sit on the page.
To help Dawn and the team visualise the pages, we used boxes to represent images and Lorem Ipsum which is place holder text made up from latin words to show where text will go.
Initial concepts and development
Once the wireframes were determined and we knew where everything was be going, we made a start on the initial concepts.
We created several layouts of the home page so Rhopoint were able to get a feel for the designs and how they could work across the site.
After an evaluation meeting we ran through the ideas and discussed what elements Rhopoint wanted to move forward with. We then developed further designs based on the feedback.
As sometimes happens, we hit a few technical issues which changed the design slightly, but when they arose we discussed these together and came up with alternative solutions.
End result
We continued refining the designs when our lovely web developer Antony created the website online, making sure it worked well both on mobile and desktop.
As with most websites, even when launched there are a few bugs that need to be sorted and tweaks to be made. This can be an ongoing process so we can always ensure the readers get the best experience possible.
Have a look and see what you think!
