WindsorUrban website makeover

A web-app for constructing custom streetlight poles, outreach arms and luminaires

WindsorUrban | Rename & rebrand

c1 infill panel: After

Curved tree guard. Vector greyscale drawing with graphical human element providing scale..

WindsorUrban is an established Christchurch manufacturer of street lighting and urban furniture. At the start of 2012 MagentaDot Brands took on the project of redesigning the firm’s redundant, Web 1.0 style site. It transpired that, in close collaboration with the firm’s marketing and sales manager Steve Campbell, the project developed into a complete company rename and rebrand.

Clicking together a great web design!

Square image modules make for handsome organised web pages that are populated in a hurry.

A good website is a 24-hours-a-day selling machine to the domestic, Australasian and global markets. It is a website that is as effective as their leading salesperson, as knowledgeable as their top buyer and as organised as their best office administrator.The website captures online everything that is good about WindsorUrban’s business, and prior to the redesign it was a website that was so poor that it was buried on page 10 of a Google search for “Urban Lighting, New Zealand” while since I redesigned the site it now ranks first!.

c1 infill panel: Before

But it was tough to build, digital assets and printed materials from a dozen sources, there are urban furniture and street lighting products of every shape, and size and being a street lighting manufacturer lots of very tall, very thin products.

Thousands of product codes, photos, ways the poles and luminaires can be combined together, new models, complete new ranges of imported products sold under license—all of that and the research and technical writing and vector illustration. Hundreds of drawings, and photo composites, masses of product images to clear cut, colour correct, crop and resize to a suitable standard for use.

What a sense of achievement to get the website populated!

c1 infill panel: After

That achievement rested on my design for the website, so it was built of compact modules that snap together neatly into a handsome grid. Not only does it look great, when you’re populating the site the pages come together really fast.

With clearly designated slots every element on the product catalogue pages, what started out as an overwhelming nested structure of folders containing images and words transformed into neatly packaged pages and intuitive navigation that allows clients to use the site with ease.

While the clever web-app. that is the brainchild of the marketing manager and client Steve Campbell—designed in collaboration with Limelight and illustrated and populated by me—came together to enable customers to mix and match streetlight luminaires and poles in any way they choose.

The grid structure organises the page information into uniform easy to read bites. Just as important, the same grid structure that’s so easy to build is unusually easy for the user to navigate! In addition to the product page the WindsorUrban site has a homepage that introduces the firm and helps the user navigate the site contents.

A renaming triumph that informs, modernises, accentuates and sells

The company was originally named ‘Windsor Heritage’, however it became clear as the research and development of the redesigned website progressed that the company had grown. Product lines had expanded, market conditions had changed, such that the heritage ‘Victorian / Edwardian’ style of the name and logo was a company brand image that no longer reflected who they were or what they did.

I raised this concern with the business owner and the marketing manager and found that they and the sales team had similar reservations and agreed a new company name and rebrand for growth was essential and best timed to launch with the redesigned website.

The change of company name was a natural course correction for the firm that required careful consideration and planning to be sure of achieving a successful outcome.

Credits

Web design firm, site builder: MagentaDot Brands
Web coding, CMS customisation,
Web-app coding: Limelight Online – Christchurch
Web app design: Steve Campbell (WindsorUrban), MagentaDot Brands

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