ODS Group are one of the largest employers in Oxfordshire and have a vast range of services - everything from waste and recycling collections to managing parks and play areas. Traditionally they are seen as a branch of the Council, but they are a commercial entity and were looking to change their website to better reflect this.
Their previous website had become very convoluted and suffered from ‘information overload’. With this project, we wanted to streamline and refine all parts of the site - the customer-facing front end and the CMS that needs to be used by over 5 different departments within the business. Therefore, this project was a redesign but within the same brand parameters, a restructure, and a new platform with new content.
The first challenge was to make each department (Environment, Fleet, Highways, Grounds, Property) feel like a self-contained site whilst still being part of the same CMS and structure. We therefore created a separate stylesheet for each department that utilised their specific brand colours - on click to each department, the navigation changes to minimise the corporate site pages and the modules and headings are automatically the correct colours. This meant that the content input was straightforward - the page takes its style from the url path and parent, so there is no worry about accidentally using the wrong department colours.
We had to give most modules a few variations, so there is flexibility but within the brand guidelines. For example, the content and media module can have the image in the shape of an ‘O’, a ‘D’ or an ‘S’, plus the option for a shape overlay. We created new modules such a pinned media section and a scrolling cards section to help bring the content to life. There were also three year’s worth of New and Case Studies to be imported. We successfully ran an import complete with images which saved a lot of time.
The end result is a more streamlined, focussed and commercially-minded site that the ODS team are very happy with. The ease of editing means they are empowered to continually improve the site and keep it up to date as they continue to expand and grow their business.
