Tony Seychell operates an engineering and fabrication business in Hoppers Crossing, 20km west of Melbourne.  The business doesn't spend money on advertising as it generates enough work from its strong industry contacts.

The business, Rylea Engineering, developed the current website in-house about five years ago.  When we met Tony, Rylea had never received any enquiries from the website, however it had an important role as a business support.  As staff members spoke to customers over the phone, they were able to refer to the site and inform their customers with accuracy.

Areas for Improvement

On meeting Tony, the following issues were identified as key areas to improve:

  • Slow Load Times
    The previous Rylea Engineering site loaded incredibly slowly. The images on the website were not optimised for the web, which resulted in images over 1MB in size. This resulted in really slow page load times and was the reason that most people left before the site had loaded.
  • Lacking Content
    The original Rylea Engineering site did not include much content (words and pictures) on the website.  Search engines love websites with content so it wasn't a surprise that there had been no enquires through the website. Fixing this would open up another avenue for potential customers to find Rylea Engineering.
  • Browser display problems
    Although the website looked okay on Tony's computer, roughly 1 in 3 people viewing his website would be seeing his website using the FireFox browser. In this browser, the menus failed to appear which meant that a significant number of people were totally unaware of most of the site.

Fixing these problems would substantially improve the value of the website.

No Fuss Redevelopment

Rylea Engineering is like many businesses: phones running off the hook, 40 staff to manage and plenty more going on. Of great importance to Tony was that the website redevelopment should happen in the easiest way possible. In the end the new website was designed, built and launched (with new content) in just under 4 weeks. Here are some of the things we did to keep the project running smoothly with no fuss:

  • Structured Communication
    Lots of things need to happen during a website redevelopment. By using online project management software, everyone involved could:
    • Quickly see where the overall project was up to.
    • Know what needed to be completed, by when.
    • What actions were required and who was responsible.
    • Access resources, such as photos, in one place.
    • Be notified as the project progressed.
  • Designing a new site look
    The experience of our team meant that a new design could be developed for the website with a minimal time commitment from Tony. A brief was developed through a conversation with Tony. Our graphic designer then worked in conjunction with Tony's feedback to produce a unique design that Rylea was happy with.
  • Adding Content
    Instead of trying to find time to write his own content, Tony was able to sit down with our copywriter and just talk about his business. Our copywriter was then able to take the content from the previous site and rewrite it, adding the information from the interview. After Tony signed off on it, we added it to the new website, all without a major time commitment from Tony.

Results

  • Quick loading. New photos and a gallery were added. All the photos were automatically optimised for the web by the website software. Additionally, small thumbnails could be generated for images which a visitor could click on if they wanted a larger photo. This resulted in significantly faster load times even though more images were used.
  • More valuable. New content made the site even easier to refer customers to. For example, the factory can be a little hard to find. By including an online map on the website, directions can be as simple as "There's a map on our website."
  • Easily updated. The website is designed to easily make changes as needed.
  • Never broken. Our ongoing maintenance service means that Tony doesn't have to worry about changes in website technology. We make sure it is always works and looks great.