The Challenge
Borne out of Coastguard’s vision for a deeper engagement with customers was the Boatie’s Best Mate strategy.
Part of this was to create a new website that houses a significant amount of customer-relevant content still residing on the flagship coastguard.org.nz website.
The new portal not only needed to ensure it served a boatie’s life cycle, but that it became the go-to site for maritime information ranging from marine insurance and education courses to the latest boating news, course discounts. Moreover, Coastguard also needed a distinct website to send its customers to during membership sign-up and advertising campaigns.
Our Role
- Information architecture
- Content strategy
- Content development
- UX and UI design
- CMS implementation
- CRM integration
- Support and maintenance
The Process
Workshop
We kicked off the project with a stakeholder workshop, to further develop the personas created by Coastguard, and dig into their respective needs and requirements.
This was done collaboratively on a good old-fashioned whiteboard with stacks and stacks of post-it notes, and a lot of discussion.
Information Architecture
Once we had gathered everything, we sat down and catalogued all of the different requirements and content ideas, organising them into a logical hierarchy designed to make it simple for any stakeholder to quickly and easily locate what they’re looking for.
We also separated out two distinct areas of the site i.e. membership acquisition, and boatie’s content so that we could provide a more focused user experience for pre and post signup users.
User Experience Design
The look and feel of the new site brings to life Coastguards fresh, new voice and brings it in-line with their brand in the marketplace.
The site communicates what they stand for – being a boatie's best mate – and brings to life the relevant touch-points through imagery and copy to compel boaties to buy memberships every year.
With a good mix of valuable content available, users can identify as a boatie-type – new or experienced – or search or browse by task – plan a trip, how to bait a hook etc. Visual pathways make it easy to see what’s on offer.
Clear membership and join prompts are present throughout the user journey so if users are there to join or renew, or if they have just come to browse, membership remains top-of-mind and navigation and pathways are readily accessible throughout the site.
Umbraco Web Development
We built the site using Umbraco CMS using a fully responsive starter kit, including a pre-configured backend. This helped to keep costs down, whilst still ensuring the site was fully mobile friendly, and site authors were provided a super flexible set of pages and components to build unique and engaging content.
As with most of our projects, the site was built in Microsoft Azure and takes full advantage of the power of cloud computing to create a fast and responsive user experience, on any device, which can be easily scaled for Coastguard’s busy times of the year.
Features
Flexible Navigation Structure
Navigation control is set independently of the content hierarchy to provide a fine level of control over the various menus.
Dual Domain Management
Two distinct domains are managed from the same admin panel, making site maintenance more efficient, and providing administrators with one less password to keep track of.
Dynamic Page Templates
Pages are built up with components rather than from a single structured form. This provides authors with a powerful content creation experience where no two pages need to look the same.
The Results
Boatie's Best Mate is the go-to website that provides a host of information to keep you safe on the water, from pre-launch checklists right through to what to do in an emergency.
“Pattern delivered our site on time, under budget, and were a pleasure to work with,” Kylie Etherton - Content Development Manager.
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