Poole Harbour Commission (PHC) is tasked with ensuring the long-term sustainability of Poole Harbour while meeting the interests of the port and its stakeholders. As one of Europe’s largest and busiest ports, the commissioner’s vital role is maintaining its day-to-day operations.
PHC underwent an internal restructure and required a revamp of its website to give it a fresh and modern feel. Five7T won the tender for this project with the promise of re-organising and modernising the website. The primary aim was to revitalise the site to meet user needs and ensure easy navigation.
Given that different groups of people accessed the site for specific requirements, the user journey needed to be smooth. The three distinct services to be focused on were commercial port activities, pleasure port users, and environmental information. All subsections, including information, tools, and transactional elements, would need to be created independently while seamlessly coming together on the site.
PHC also tasked Five7T with transforming its database system. The existing system lacked organisation, so creating a platform that could efficiently capture and record payment and permit information was essential.
As with any project of this magnitude, numerous challenges emerged. Five7T had to ensure that users seeking a specific service could effortlessly navigate the pages to access the needed information.
It was crucial to prevent users interested in reading pleasure craft information from being directed to sections relating to the commercial port and vice versa. Additionally, some information needed to feature in multiple sections on the site, necessitating a seamless flow from one section to the next.
The Five7T team meticulously framed each section’s user journey during the design phase to overcome these challenges. This approach led to our graphic design team creating the main pages for each service. Although the same look was used for each section, the separate services retained some individuality in design, showcasing the successful outcome of our efforts.
We implemented SEO techniques within the site design to ensure users were directed to the relevant sections during their search. For example, an individual searching for harbour permit payments would be taken directly to the appropriate page.
Our team built a custom platform to capture all permit and payment information. This platform automatically connects to WordPress forms but can be manually added and accessed anywhere with login details. We ensured the system was user-friendly and could accept future amendments or additions.
If you want to refresh and re-organise your website to produce a modern and sleek feel, our team at Five7T can help. To discuss your ideas, give us a call on 07774 774 254.