Objectives:
Maregatti Interiors (MI) is a long-time client of Kevin Wood Interactive (KWI). A website was developed back in 2004 that stood the test of time in terms of design, branding and marketing for several years. In 2009, KWI was contracted to implement the strategy, planning and design for an updated site. Key objectives of the redesign project included: 1) Further establish Maregatti as a national “major player” in their industry 2) Leverage the site and Search Engine Optimization initiatives to increase visibility in the insular Chicago market. 3) allow for Maregatti Interiors to easily make updates to the site internally. Allow for updates to be reviewed and approved by global admin before published to the live site. 4) Pull enough from the design language of the parent company site (BSA Lifestructures) to establish a connection while retaining the unique brand identity of MI.
The development portion of the project was executed under contract with zlinemedia (during the time I was co-owner) in 2010.
Solution:
Based off of the research, strategy and design of KWI, zlinemedia produced a Flash site that created a User Experience that effectively communicated the Maregatti brand. All content is XML based, and a custom .NET CMS was developed to allow for the easy updating of content and projects. To further increase usability, deep-linking techniques were implemented to allow for bookmarking of specific pages and projects as well as allow the browser buttons to function as the user expects. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was improved by text-only “back” versions of each page that were indexed by search engines.
The entire site was developed to both scale and expand to accommodate the wide variety of screen resolutions and aspect ratios of users.
