Background
Liverpool BID Company is a private not-for-profit company that has a fantastic reputation across the city as a champion of local business, and a track record that has seen improvements across the city’s varied business districts. They work on behalf of their many levy payers to improve the city and its businesses making Liverpool an amazing place to live, work and visit.
Established in 2005, their years of dedication to the city and it’s levy payers have seen the Liverpool BID Company experience sustained growth and increased exposure leading them to be in a position to re-invest into getting a new website that focuses on the user experience, making the website user friendly and easy to navigate for its BID levy payers and other stakeholders.
What was the opportunity?
Liverpool BID Company identified that their current website could benefit from a refresh that puts user experience at the forefront. The core objective of the project was to create a new user-friendly website that provides their varied audience groups with a fast, reliable, and easy-to-use hub for information about, and from, Liverpool BID Company.
We worked with the BID team to develop the new platform, which included a new user-friendly navigation, a revised structure, updated layout, new look and feel, and improved interface to help create a strong new user experience.
The new site required an easy to manage backend content management system (CMS) that will help the team at Liverpool BID Company add information/data to the site quickly and easily; and a clear simple navigation of information for stakeholders in the front end structure and layout. This along with other success factors such as accessibility, high quality user experience, SEO and page speed were to be considered as the key criteria of this project.
Why it matters
Liverpool BID Company brings additionality to the people of Liverpool through street transformation, connectivity and collaboration which ultimately enhances our community. They are passionate about what they do, and as a local business in Liverpool our community is always at the forefront of what we do.
We here at Kaleidoscope value communications that matter and we believe that the work that Liverpool BID Company does for our community is highly important to the people and businesses of Liverpool. Therefore we have been thrilled to be a part of implementing a high quality user focused online platform to enable them to continue to provide the highest quality of service to the people of Liverpool.
What did we do?
At the outset of the project we initiated an in-depth strategy and planning phase. Collaborating closely with the Liverpool BID Company team, we facilitated workshops to explore the organisation’s needs, the target audience and competitors. By aligning business goals with user needs, we were able to devise an approach and roadmap that included a detailed timeline, budget and resource allocation, in addition to a detailed scope of the project to ensure transparent and efficient workflow.
The key features of the site showcase a new and interactive events calendar with the ability to categorise events using a filter, a comprehensive data hub consisting of live footfall and consumer spending data, and a unique levy payer hub which allows users to find exactly what they are looking for quickly and easily when browsing the site.
The events calendar provides the functionality of adding upcoming events that the Liverpool BID Company are involved with and also to categorise each event into a specific type of event, location or occasion. For example whilst the Eurovision song contest was running throughout Liverpool each event could easily be found by going to the “What’s On” page and then navigating through the filters to the Eurovision category where all events relating to the contest could be found. The Calendar also features different layouts including List view and Calendar Month view.
The Data Hub section features a custom built API integration, as part of a bespoke WordPress plugin, which takes in datasets from footfall and consumer spending data services, runs a range of localised calculations to produce relevant Liverpool focused statistics, trends and charts, and then displays them to site users. This includes hourly updated live (hourly) data, monthly summaries and quarter-by-quarter trend analysis.
The unique levy payer sections allows members to quickly access Events, Offers and News specified to members only. This gives an easy route through the site for levy payers as once they have arrived at this page everything they will specifically need can be found throughout the page.
User experience (UX) design played a crucial role in the website’s development, and considerable attention was dedicated to this aspect in the planning phase and throughout. Employing a user-centric approach to the sitemap, architecture and design, the resulting website was thoughtfully crafted to provide a clear, simple and visually appealing experience for visitors. Our design team meticulously considered information such as architecture, navigation, and visual hierarchy to optimise user flow and engagement. As well as incorporating responsive design principles, ensuring seamless access and usability across various devices and screen sizes.
Before the launch of the site, we implemented a comprehensive quality assurance strategy encompassing browser testing, responsive testing, performance testing, and accessibility testing. By adhering to robust testing practices such as this, we ensure a high standard of quality and reliability for all of the websites we build.
