Note: This case study is now out of date and refers to an earlier version of the site it links to. I will update this case study as part of the development lifecycle once the site is complete.
Premier Norwegian Log Cabins UK Ltd is a new company bringing Norwegian log cabins to the UK. The cabins range from simple two-bedroom single floor buildings to full three-storey family homes, and the market is tourism, leisure, local government and private individuals.
Because this was a start-up company the project needed to be done quickly and cost effectively. Only a little marketing material was available. We were given permission to use photographs from the Norwegian brochure, and I was able to get a brief from someone who had met the Norwegian company involved.
My first task was to consider the keywords that would generate the best traffic from the search engines. If research had shown 'log homes' was a better bet than 'log cabins' we might have changed the company name. Luckily, it didn't. You can see how this is done on my search engine position page.
Next was to work out the structure of the site. I decided a main page plus an example based on a recent proposal, and the contact details would suffice.
I needed some sort of graphical theme too. I considered an architectural theme but it felt too technical and dry. I thought about using images of British woodland flowers but it seemed too quaint and clashed with the Norwegian product roots. I usually like thinking of colour schemes and I ended up thinking of taking a sky blue from a photograph and stretching it darker and lighter to form two basic colours .. a dark blue and a very very light blue. Sky = freedom and outdoor living which seemed to tie in nicely with the theme of the product.
I took an architectural plan from the brochure and changed its brightness and contrast until it was very faint, rotated it, coloured it blue, and used that as an interesting backdrop.
Next was the text. I wrote the text based on the briefing meeting, but also using the keyword research I'd done earlier. I needed to use the right number of the right keywords to get the best search engine position.
When I came to processing photographs I was starting to come up with a loose two-column layout. Text the full width of the screen is far too hard to read and needs to be marshalled into columns somehow. I did that with stylesheets and CSS positioning.
The site was cleared by the client with minor changes, and went live the same day. The client said "I can't tell you how pleased everyone is", and later "we've had eight serious enquiries in the first month" and "we're getting too many enquiries". I've been asked to look into doing more work on the site.