Website design process(Case study with Florigene)

In today’s day simply marketing your services the traditional method may not be enough. When someone receives your company’s advertising material, the first point of contact is usually your website. Users may also search the Internet for your company information. If people are visiting your website before contacting you or searching for you on the Internet, your website is important for your business. Described below is the case study of a website design process we followed for one of our clients, Florigene Pty Ltd.

Introduction:
Florigene is a company that applies biotechnology techniques to the development of novel varieties of cut flowers. They wished to redesign their website and portray a fresh image on the Internet, attractively presenting their products and providing information on wholesalers. Due to their advertising materials, wholesalers and products constantly being updated, maintenance of the site was a consideration once the website design process was completed.

The following processes were taken to design the website for Florigene:

First meeting:
The first meeting is usually to get to know one another and about each other’s businesses. Staff from Florigene knew what they wished their website to do. They wanted to better showcase the company on the Internet, to provide some information on the research the company undertakes, to list their global wholesalers and to better display their products – carnations in various shades of purple. At the end of our meeting we were requested to write a project brief and prepare a proposal for this website design work.

Fixing the cost and timeline:
Our designers started the process by sketching logos in various colours, fonts and illustrations. After a 2 week period, all design sketches were compiled and shown to client to seek feedback.

Discussion:
Upon acceptance of our proposal we met several more times for discussions. We gathered detailed information about their business, what services they wished to provide to the visitors of their new website and who their target audience are. We collected their business cards, brochures, and any other advertising material we could get our hands on. As a web design company it was important to understand their business and logo - what the logo meant and the fonts and colours used for their logo. This helped us design a site that clearly represented the business.

Content and images:
We requested for written materials for the website and images to be used for the initial design.

Initial Draft:
The design specification was relayed to two graphic designers. We started by creating initial design drafts of the Home page. Design for other pages would be influenced by the look and feel of the Home Page. Once several drafts of the home page was designed, we showed them to the client for feedback.


Samples of two of the designs are shown here.

More Drafts:
After showing the first brief and getting their feedback, we continued to work on their design and aesthetics. Another set of design drafts were created and feedback received.


It was success with Design 4. They were very happy and wished to use this concept for their new website.



The concept of the website design was based on the design of their business stationary, and the colours of their unique products. We wanted to stress the colours of their flowers but still maintain a corporate look. Instilling the uniqueness and variety of the colours and flowers was a key focus. The lady depicted on the homepage was equally important. She is the face of Florigene and is featured in all of their advertising materials.

Revise Drafts:
Design 4 was further refined and when the clients were satisfied with the overall look and feel we started breaking the design into HTML code understandable by the browsers. While coding the home page, we continued showing layout for the other pages of the site.

Development and Scripting:
Since the design required database functionalities and many pages with written content, we hosted the site temporarily on our development server. This allowed our clients to see the progress of the development and recommend changes where necessary.

Our Recommendations and marketing ideas to enhance the website:
To help the website visitors get a good feel and appreciation for their unique products and their services. We recommended the following implementations.

Wholesalers search.
In order to help the website visitors find Florigene’s wholesalers easily we implemented a search form. Selecting a country would list all wholesalers for that country and users can then select the individual wholesaler for their contact details.
Photos of products.
The design provided for empty sections of the page on the left hand side below the navigation. We recommended that photos of their products be displayed to fill this space. Viewing the same pictures again and again would have been monotonous so we designed the pages such that each time someone visits the website a different set of flower arrangement is loaded. We implemented the same with the catch phrase under the logo.
Flash gallery.
A flash gallery of their products was created to lend some interactiveness to the website. This flash gallery is featured on their home page.
Allow visitors to download.
Florigene advertises widely in many magazines during festivals and seasons. They also take part in various bridal and flower shows. Samples of their advertisements and images of their flower arrangements from these shows are displayed on the website. Visitors can download these as pdfs and print them.

Testing and launch:
Before launching the website, the client and us, together we tested the website, ensured there were no broken links and checked that all images were of good resolution and quality, written content had no spelling errors and that all pages were loading correctly. When the client was satisfied with the website then we moved the site to the production server and Florigene website was made live. The whole process took us two and half months to complete.

Website maintenance:
Launching the website was just a start. To make the website more than just a brochureware and in order to make the website a business asset, it is important to regularly update the website. That is exactly what Florigene has been doing. We have been updating their website regularly with new wholesaler details, advertisements for various seasons, flower arrangement pictures from shows which they participate in and new developments on their research. These regular updates to the website have helped draw a large audience on the Internet.

Click to view Florigene website