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Natural Building Technologies
Redesign Proposal
ProductsAbout Systems News Contact
A Familiar Site Map
Structure Notes
Our initial thoughts for structuring Natural Building Technologies’
new site is largely to keep things the same, albeit with a simplified
‘systems’ section that combines information about new build and
retrofit systems.
We’ve also suggested having a dedicated downloads area under
‘systems’, where architects/QS’s/contractors can access all data
sheets and technical information for different systems. The
location of this downloads area in the site structure may be
subject to change, as we’re aware that products also have
downloadable data sheets/health and safety information etc. So,
one option here might be to combine all downloadable material
on the site and display them in a new primary navigation area.
We’ve also suggested collating the various bits of general
information that’s currently dotted around the site (e.g. ‘essential
reasons to choose NBT systems’), and presenting it in a more
ordered way under an ‘about’ section.
How we progress throught the planning stage
We’ll provide a site structure like the one in our initial proposal on
the left. It may have additional detail added based on feedback
from this proposal document.
If the site structure doesn’t need amending in any way, it can be
signed off, and we’ll move on to providing some detailed
wireframes (diagrams of specific page layouts) so all parties have a
clear idea of exactly which elements should be included on the
site, and where they should go.
Once this is decided, we start to look at how to style these layouts.
Home
Who we areWho we areWho we are New Build
Retrofit
Downloads
Services we offer
Page GroupPrimary Navigation
Section
Key
How we progress through the design stage
Design Notes
Typically, once we’ve got a clear idea of how the site will be
structured and laid out, we’ll start putting together some style tiles
(Fig 1.2) - examples which illustrate different apporaches to
designing your site. They’re more specific than a mood board, but
aren’t as labour intensive as creating detailed mockups of your
site.
This means that we can progress quickly through different
iterations of the design and efficiently get to a visual style which
best presents your business or organisation.
Once a design style has been established, we can then move onto
some more detailed visuals to come up with a precise plan for
styling your site.
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Design-wise, we’re in a great position, in that Natural Building
Technologies has reasonably versatile branding, and a simple, clear colour
palette (Fig 1.1) that we can use to design a clean, modern site.
We feel that in general, the typography and layout of the current site
doesn’t complement clarity of the colour scheme, nor the clean look of
Natural Building Technologies’ brochure which we viewed when meeting
in person.
Our focus for a redesign would be:
A More Minimal Design
The current design can be a little difficult to read and to understand the
layout of pages. More whitespace, a more considered layout and
typographical changes will contribute to a cleaner appearance.
Clearer Typography
With some clearer typography, dense pages can become a lot easier to
read. With particular regard to the products area, but also across the site,
we would aim to present a clearer typographical heirarchy (making the
most important bits of text have the most promince, and vice versa), pay
more attention to line-height and whitespace to make text more readable,
and produce greater consistency in type style.
Engaging Full Width Imagery
A modern, responsive design means that we can break out of a
constrained grid and display full width images, breaking up text and
providing much more engaging visuals.
FIG 1.1 Natural Building Technologies Logo and color palette
FIG 1.2 Partial example of a style tile, used to iterate through different design styles quickly.
How this work affects our cost estimate
Performance Notes
Work that we carry out with regard to the structure of your site
comes as standard - all our sites are mobile-friendly, emply
structured data, and are fast and secure.
Extras here are the addition of an SSL certificate, and existing
content SEO review - these will be quoted for separately at the end
of this document.
Search Engine Optimisation
One of the key aims with the Natural Building Technologies redesign is to
improve search engine ranking/visibilty. Many of the methods we’ll use to
improve SEO are valuable in their own right - such as building a mobile
friendly site, making sure it’s secure and that it loads quickly.
Fundamentally, there are three areas that we’ll concentrate on to ensure
that the site performs well: How the site is structured, how it is populated
with content, and how it’s presented to search engines.
How the site is structured
Mobile Friendly
When doing a mobile search, Google search results will show a preference
to sites that are ‘mobile-friendly’.
All sites that we build are responsive, meaning that they respond to the
device they are being viewed on and present a layout and style that suits
the device. This is a fundamental step in ensuring that a site is mobile
friendly.
Structured Data
When building your site, we’ll add structured data to the markup - this is a
method of adding annotations to content so that it makes more sense to
search engines (Fig 2.1).
Fast and Secure
It’s also important that your site loads quickly and is secure. We use a
dedicated WordPress hosting provider which employs advanced caching
techniques to serve pages.
With our hosting package, static content on your site (scripts, stylesheets
and images) will be distributed via a content delivery network (CDN).
This reduces load on your server and increases loading speeds by
delivering static content via servers closest to the end user (wherever they
are in the world).
We also host our sites in a secure environment that’s highly resilient to
exploits and malicious attacks.
As an additional measure, we can add an SSL certificate to your site to
enable encrypted (HTTPS) connections.
FIG 2.2 Traffic light system for content analysis of individual posts and pages.
FIG 2.1 Example of structured data (annotated content) - itemscope, itemtype, itemprop etc.
How the site is populated with content
We build sites using a content-management system that empowers you to
add and edit content on your site. This means that, for the most part, you
are responsible for the content on your site. We will, however, provide
powerful tools, and helpful guidance to enable you to optimise that
content.
Primarily, we’ll use a popular and well-maintained WordPress plugin
which, as well as providing site-wide settings and options to improve SEO,
will also provide detailed content analysis for each page, post, product
etc. on your site, giving an easy to understand traffic light system for how
to enhance your content. (Fig 2.2)
We can also offer content review services - where any migrated content
will undergo analysis with a view to improving its SEO score.
How the site is presented to search engines
This process involves submitting site maps, specifying preferred domains
(e.g. www vs non-www) and checking for errors that should be corrected,
or enhancments to be made. Primarly, we’ll do this via the Google Search
Console, but we can carry out a a similar process using Bing’s
Webmaster Tools.
These tools also provide valuable feedback on the structure of the site -
Google’s Search Console, for example, gives suggestions on HTML
improvements that can help its search engine parse a page better.
WordPress Website
Cost
Development of a bespoke WordPress theme and site specific plugins,
including products, services and case studies.
£3800 + VAT
What Comes as Standard
Site Setup and Launch
Technical Training
We’ll provide a PDF user guide that provides basic guidance on
how to use WordPress, with a few specifics on how in particular to
edit the customised sections of your site.
Whichever hosting platform you choose, we’ll take care of
everything required to get your new site live, including deploying
the site’s files and content to a server, pointing your existing
domain to your new site and setting up a ‘staging’ area, where we
can test out changes to your site before making them live.
We build your site using WordPress - an extremely popular open
source content management system. WordPress’ intuitive
platform means you don’t have to have much technical expertise
to edit or add content to your site.
In terms of the look and feel, we’ll develop a bespoke ‘theme’ for
your WordPress site - so your site will be tailored exactly to your
needs, and look how you want it to.
Design and Development
Existing Content Analysis
Site Development
Adding an SSL certificate validates your website’s identity and encrypts all
information sent to and from your website. It’s an extra layer of security
that’s often used with e-Commerce, banking and social media sites.
However, any site that is secured with SSL can also rank higher in search
engine results.
We’ll conduct a review of existing content that’s been migrated across to
your new site (such as news posts) and make or suggest amendments to
improve the relevance of the content and its keywords, with a view to
improve search engine visibility.
£100 + VAT£175 + VAT
SSL Certificate
Some Things To Consider
Domain Names
It’s worth thinking about this now! If you have a new site and have
not yet registered a domain name, let us know, and we can advise
how to go about this.
If you’re coming to us for a site redesign, it’s important that you
provide us with details of where you domain name is registered as
soon as possible, that we we can ensure that we get your site live
by your preferred date without any hassle.
Emails
We don’t offer email hosting services - it’s a good idea to keep your
website and email hosting separate (that way if your site goes
down, people can still email you, and vice versa). We’re more than
happy to help set up email accounts for you.
Our recommendation is to subscribe to Google Apps for Work -
which also provides cloud storage and shared calendars.
Hosting WIth Us
If you choose not to host your website through us, we can’t
provide automated backup services, and you’ll have to take on
more responsibility in terms of keeping your site up to date.
Hosting Options
+ VAT per year+ VAT per month
£250MONTHLY
OR
YEARLY
£25
Hosting that’s optimised for WordPress. Our managed hosting package offers
the following advantages over typical shared hosting packages:
Secure
Hosting providers actively monitor your site for malicious code and will fix any
issues at no additional cost.
Super fast
The files that make up your site will be distributed via a Content Delivery
Network (CDN), so no matter where the end user is, your site will load up
quickly.
Automated Site Updates
It’s extremely important for security to keep your site up to date. Managed
hosting takes care of updates by running them automatically.
Automated Backups
All your data is backed up daily, and can be restored easily and immediately
with one click.
Staging Sites
Test out changes and updates on a duplicate version of your site.
What You Get
Feedback
Some things to consider when providing feedback:
• Thinking about the content that you’d to present on the site, will it all fit in somehwere in the site structure?
• We’ve suggested a couple of options for how to present downloads on the site (either separately, under products and systems, or in one dedicated section - like a downloads hub). Do you have any preferences here?
• Is there anything about the site structure that you don’t understand, is unclear, or would like us to explain in more detail?
• The ‘Performance’ section of this document gets a bit technical. Is there anything in this section that you don’t understand, would like to discuss, or would like us to explain in more detail?
• We’ve provided a cost breakdown at the end of the document - do you have any questions about these quotations/do they make sense?
