Websites

Western Region Finalist 2011

Commercial Website, Australian Web Awards 2011

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As Mundella grew, they began releasing new and exciting products and brands - it was now time their website caught up. The challenge with the website was to communicate the brand's natural and friendly personality, engage customers by really showcasing Mundella's products and allow the website to grow and change with the rapidly developing company.

Mundella's audience varies a lot being a retail company. They need to be accessible to a wide range of people, which certainly presents challenges in design and even features. The website needed above all to be family friendly; to appeal to the person who makes most of the purchasing decisions in the household and still be engaging for the rest of the family.

The website we proposed and built for Mundella achieved the following:

• Conveyed the brand into the online space. The website needed to but fun and exciting with movement, but still accessible. Key focus was on ease of use and 'simplicity': web accessibility was on the top of the list.
• Focused on the product lines, highlighting the range Mundella created was key for the website.
• Allowed the client to manage almost every aspect of the website from the content management system. This was key because products, awards, news and health information changed regularly and it was key being able to release the information quickly.
• Introduced more social networking options to extend its reach better into younger demographics.
• Compared favourably to much larger dairy producers.
• Delivered real value for money.

The New Energy site was unique in that not only did it need to fulfil its corporate duty, but also have a more local focus for the communities in and around the project areas. New Energy also had some pretty serious scientific concepts and processes that need to be easily understandable by the general public as well as showcasing the company's commitment to the environment and the communities in which their plants operate.

Design City designed the New Energy website to be professional and corporate, with a bright and friendly side to it. The Home page was created to funnel users to important areas of the site, but also to be entirely editable by New Energy as important events occur and need to have prime-time focus.

Much of the site was to function as an information tool for investors and the general public to learn about the company and their technology and their mission - to generate clean, renewable energy from waste diverted from landfill. To this end, we created interactive diagrams to step through the overall energy process as well as the special and environmentally superior gasification technology. The site is also a resource for the individual communities where projects are being established so they can understand positive impact it will have. This included general information as well as downloads, community news and important frequently asked questions. The site also has an integrated news system which allows the administrators simple access to publishing multiple news articles on any of the site's news sections.

As a company almost fanatical about sustainability, it was important that the site was as sustainable as possible. We organised New Energy on our very own Green Hosting - environmentally sustainable website hosting platform and ensured that things like print stylesheets were optimised so that if the pages were to be printed, they wouldn't waste paper or printer ink.

With significant progress towards their major pig iron project in Indonesia, Indo Mines Limited were looking to mature their brand image, starting with a website update and redesign. The brief was to create a more vibrant and engaging experience to match the momentum of the business, as well as evolve the functionality of the site to allow project videos and better shareholder communication. We also took the opportunity to add some additional information for shareholders about the company's community involvement and the resource itself.

With years of experience with the original site and using the content management system, we were able to work with the client to easily find ways to add value to the current site without blowing the budget. Improvements were made to make the site more flexible to allow Indo Mines to showcase some of their more important news and improve the overall appeal of the site. We've even mapped out some nice additions down the track.

With the plan that we would create a clean and functional projects and investor-based website for Modun, we were inspired to create a couple of really different design options. One was more traditional, corporate and professional; while the other, a unanimous studio favourite, was more sophisticated and modern – while still maintaining the professional. We were obviously on the same page as Modun also appreciated the more modern look – utilising excellent client photography and subtly highlighting the duality of Mongolia – the old and historical with the new and modern.

The site is content managed and allows Modun unprecedented ease of use in making new market announcements and updating their project images and text. The Home page also offers excellent flexibility with plenty of customisable content areas to enable Modun to highlight all important project news. Hosted on super-fast servers, Modun's site is now a benchmark in corporate and listed company websites for our studio.

Heritage Trail Lodge is a boutique 4 star hotel located in Margaret River. Located right on the edge of the beautiful Bramley Forest overlooking the tall Karri trees, it is an ideal holiday spot for a pampering or just a weekend getaway.

Heritage Trail Lodge came to us looking to modernise their online presence and integrate a new booking engine to take bookings online even easier than before. The new site would allow weekly updates (to content, images, galleries... everything really!) via the content management system in the back-end, as well as new accommodation specials and offers and heaps of information and images on the location, region, rooms and facilities. We integrated email newsletters, social media like Facebook and Twitter, as well Trip Advisor widgets, and the ability to share any page easily. The whole website was designed to really give the visitor a glimpse of the beauty and luxury on offer - and we're really happy with the way the site and design turned out.

Working in a competitive space like accommodation in Margaret River, we worked hard with Heritage Trail Lodge to optimise the site and content for improved Google search rankings. Heritage Trail Lodge are now ranking competitively on their search terms after only a few weeks of the new site being up - a great achievement indeed!

We love the great job Design City did on our new website! It looks absolutely fantastic and the traffic and online bookings have increased enormously since it was published. Their very knowledgeable design and web development teams were excellent. They were very professional and helpful, bringing our project in on time and on budget. We can't recommend them highly enough...

Helen, Heritage Trail Lodge

Risk Point came to Design City looking for a website design that really took the business to a new level. As a risk management consulting and advisory business, Risk Point were looking to leverage the advances in technology and social media to get their online presence working harder for them.

We sat down with Risk point at the beginning of the project to talk through some ideas and strategies that would work well for their type of business and we're happy to say much of what was discussed in that meeting made it to the website. The brief for the website design was to create a site which was clean, professional and evolved the current corporate branding. We were also involved in creating graphics for many of Risk Point's models, with the difficulty being keeping a balance between something that is visually appealing, easy to understand and easy to follow.

We worked directly with Risk Point's website developer for this project, who did the website build from our visuals.

In the newest incarnation of the Demeter Wealth Management website (we worked on their old site, back in, gosh, 2005?), our main focus was to really highlight how different Demeter is from your average financial services company. From the dozens of inspirational quotes and stunning imagery, the site is friendly, inviting and a pleasure to use: what a change from some of their competitors!

The inclusion of the client centre that brings together the latest news, reviews, videos, case studies and FAQs is a great plus for keeping clients in the loop. Updated regularly, the site will keep working for Demeter for a long time to come. We also worked to highlight a call to action on key pages, leading people to book that appointment or register for the seminar.

All in all we’re pumped about the new Demeter Wealth Management site – take a look around and we think you might be too!

Working with the team at Design City has delivered - not just a visual website for publication - but an opportunity to explore who and what demeter stands for, the values encompassed, the clients we act for, and the services we offer. Building our online presence with Design City allowed for the integration of visual, commercial and ethical concepts that were once just thoughts. We now have an online presence that accurately reflects our business intentions, and works seamlessly with our in-house business offering… Thanks Team, it continues to be an unfolding and rewarding experience working with you…

Gerri Scott, Senior Associate, Demeter Wealth Management

Hot Chili Limited currently making the important position from explorer to project developer. Hot Chili has a portfolio of large multi-commodity copper projects in Chile and with rapid growth in the value of the company, it has outperformed most of its peers recently. Productora is Hot Chili’s flagship multi-commodity copper project, with an operating underground mine and large-scale multi-commodity copper resources amenable to multi-km scale open pit operations.

Following on from their successful IPO (or Intital Public Offering), Hot Chili needed an investor website that was informative and as easy to use as possible. On the top of the to-do list was a projects section that highlighted the advances they'd made on their projects and an investor section capable of evolving with the company and providing investors with all the information they need (as well as fulfilling their legal requirements from ASIC). We also did some copywriting for Hot Chili to help focus the content and really highlight the important aspects of the projects clearly (especially important since the content was specifically written for the more verbose Prospectus). The site also included a newsletter manager that allowed Hot Chili to email investors important news and releases as they happen.

Hot Chili rebranded in 2011 and we reskinned and updated the website to match this new branding. From here the website was much cleaner and visual, focusing on the new achievements of the company.

MO Consultants provide project management and coordination of, well frankly, technologically difficult projects that scare most people. Well established, they seek to create long term relationships with clients over many projects, where they’re known for their results-driven work.

MO approached Design City to update their online image to make it more engaging and showcase the company as out of the ordinary. They found us though one of our other client websites (New Energy Corporation), and while initial conversations started around the New Energy site, it was clear that MO had their own objectives and needed something quite different to New Energy.

Finally, MO wanted a responsive website, one that would respond to the device it was being viewed on and be perfectly readable and optimised for each device. Employing a responsive design increased reach to all kinds of mobile devices, from tablets to smartphones (to whatever’s next!) and meant that a separate mobile website was unnecessary. The end result is flexible and works well across a large range of devices—have a look on your smartphone or play around resizing the browser with for yourself!

The final site is bold and beautiful, with strong lines, powerful imagery and a condensed typeface. We focussed on highlighting the industries MO serviced, as the needs of each were distinct, showcasing industry-specific projects and offering under each.

Aussie Modular Solutions (AMS) engineers, designs, manufactures and installs modular buildings for the resource, commercial and residential sectors. Formerly Aussie Portables and Alternative Living, the newly formed AMS needed to leverage its reputation as one of Western Australia’s most trusted modular, prefab and transportable providers and create a strong online identity to cut through in a very competitive market.

Design City were engaged to design and build the AMS website from the ground up, utilising the existing materials from the previous companies as well as the newly developing materials that were somewhere between planned and being created.

We initially sat down with AMS to work through the site information architecture and content strategy. We decided to move forward with a client-focused strategy as the diverse target audience of the company leant itself to creating focused areas of the site for specific user groups. We worked with a web copywriter and AMS to create the content specifically for the web and looked at innovative intelligent ways we could have users interacting with the site.

The site itself was built from the ground up to be a showcase for the new brand, the sectors and the floorplans. The content management system was customised to enable quick and easy editing of the many areas of the site - AMS can control pretty much everything on the site, which is how we like it. As well as creating a site that is exceedingly search engine friendly, we have also maintained an ongoing search engine optimisation (SEO) programme for the site that is designed to compliment their search engine advertising campaign. Finally, the site is cross browser and device compatible (meaning all browsers back to IE6 and smartphones), works without flash or javascript and built with standards, accessibility and usability in mind. It's one of our personal favourite sites.

We needed to refocus our website to attract more customers for our residential product line. The website redesign looks great and the changes were put through with little effort and no issues. Design City we easy to deal with and patient in accommodating for our busy work schedules.

Terry Birnie, Operations Manager—Aussie Modular Solutions

We worked with GCS to create a new website that showcased their growing presence in the construction services marketplace with vivid colour, bold imagery and a user-friendly interface. While the previous website focussed on shareholder communication and corporate governance compliance (after their ASX listing in late 2007), the new website builds on this by putting clients front-and-centre with easy access to products, services, divisions and community news.

With strong growth in the resource and industrial, commercial and residential markets, GCS was in a prime position to improve their online product catalogue and highlight the diversity of their offerings.

The new site is focused on showcasing GCS as the market leader. With a diverse range of on-site photography from many high-profile projects across WA, we were able to create a very visual and high-impact online presence. Along with highlighting their extensive divisions, resources and locations across Australia, we wanted to highlight the ongoing contribution GCS is making to the community with a dedicated community centre.

The site is content managed and allows the GCS team to make regular in-house updates to keep the site current. We’ve worked hard on creating a site that is visually appealing and dynamic whilst also accessible and standard compliant. The GCS brand is constantly evolving and this site allows for that natural development and growth of the brand in the future.

Design City did an amazing job and we recommend then to any business looking to implement a strong foundation in cyberspace. Having a flexible medium, cultivating real time, up-to-date information has never been more important. Planning, photography, copy writing, CMS, SEO, training, and analytics. Design City were there for us every step of the way - with talent, dedication, and a passion for website design and development

Brendan Krepp, Marketing Coordinator—Global Construction Services Limited