26.10.2010

CMS, Information architecture, web interface and template design

Cambridge design company Smith have just launched a new corporate website for world leading gel imaging and analysis systems company Syngene (www.syngene.com).

Director at Smith, Adrian Kimpton explains: “Over time the company had grown and expanded its portfolio and depth of market coverage to the extent that the previous site had become overly complicated and difficult to navigate. It also meant that the site was far from being proactive in representing the products and their applications to market in the most effective way. Our brief was to address these issues at the same time as looking at the overall visual impression.”

Jayne Arthur, Marketing Communications Manager, Syngene said: “We chose Smith out of four different companies we asked to pitch, as they really seemed to grasp immediately what we were trying to achieve. They came to the initial meeting after having taken the time to look at our industry and competitors and really seemed to understand our needs, whilst being very proactive in putting forward some great ideas.”

The design solution

The main difference with the previous site is a much cooler more technical feel was introduced alongside a stronger use of the corporate colour palette to reinforce the brand.

Syngene have a broad range of products and and even broader range of applications they can be used for. So on the home page we created a single large banner gateway to the site which acts as an overview not only to the broad range of products but also show cases some of the applications the products can be used for.

The site has also become much more intuitive – customers would know what they needed to achieve but maybe not know which product would be best for them. The site provides easily updated 'latest developments', free updates and “if you looked for that you may like this” techniques to make the overall experience for a prospect much more useful, proactive and efficient.

We also introduced features on lower level pages such as ' Other clients looked at' to help highlight and cross sell while an extended footer means your never more than a single click away from a specific product page.

The technical solution

We created a flexible set of page templates, style sheets and sub menus specifically so the site could expand within its own structure easily and seamlessly whilst retaining the sense of clear navigation.

Using our tried, trusted and hugely stable and simple CMS system means a very simple interface for the client, incredibly easy to understand site structure, and with the ability to view all previously used iterations of the site, add and re order pages and preview instantly any changes before publishing prompted this response from our client: “I am not an IT specialist and needed a CMS system which was simple and easy to understand whilst delivering a website that looked professional and I feel that with Smith we have really achieved this. Adrian, Ben and Julian have been very easy to work with and provide a very friendly, efficient and supportive service. I would have no hesitation in recommending their services.” Jayne Arthur, Syngene.

What we have now is a much more contemporary, easy to use and proactive sales and marketing tool that can start working much harder on behalf of our clients business moving forward.