The following steps were taken for this project;

Research and Personas 

In order to understand how the two new websites should be redesigned we carried out a thorough audit and research phase. This included an analytics audit of the current websites to understand its performance and gain insight into how users were currently engaging with the sites. We were able to follow user journeys to identify the pages that attracted the highest bounce rates and why. Analytics reviews of the website and social channels also assisted in identifying target audience groups. 

Information Architecture

As mentioned above, the information architecture of the site was in need of a major overhaul which would then allow a smooth and logical experience between the Harbour Trust and Cockatoo Island websites. The key consideration in the IA was that the navigation had to work over both websites while being distinctly different for two different purposes. To solve this issue, we decided to navigate by the intent of the user, rather than by location. 

Creative Design

The main goal during the UI stage was to create the feeling of one harmonious, inspirational experience where all current sites, and potential future sites, are interconnected. Large, bold imagery of the Harbour Trust's foreshore locations were used heavily throughout the design, along with clean white space to build emotion and promote the amazing locations.

Development

Umbraco was the CMS platform of choice for these two websites due to its open source capabilities and user friendly management. We took a responsive module based development approach to provide flexibility for self-managed content and future-proofing, this also allowed us to rapidly develop the UI and perform back-end Umbraco CMS integration concurrently. 

Integration with Click Dimensions for emails and list subscription was also carried out as part of the development, as was the creation of dynamic form builder.