Client
DHV is a leading international consultancy and engineering firm, providing services and innovative solutions in many different areas. They are headquartered in the Netherlands and have offices across the globe. DHV's mission statement is as follows:
We are a company for people from people, working in partnership with our clients to deliver innovative, quality solutions for the sustainable development of our living environment.
Briefing
The main points from our briefing:
- Show the human side of DHV
- Make the website more 'outside-in', focussed on the audience it is intended for
- Show the global presence of DHV
- Show the breadth of their services
The main goals for the website are to generate more leads and facilitate recruitment.
Solution
The overarching solution is an Information Architecture approach where the content (project descriptions, publications, events, people, etc) can be found using a number of different entry routes (market, region, client types). Many content items will actually show up in multiple categories, and this will help to show the breadth of services. In the content intself, the human aspect will need to be clear.
To get to the implemented website, these are the steps User Intelligence was involved in
- Three initial concepts
- One final concept
- Full interaction design & visual design
- Content strategy & management
- RfP process & vendor selection
- Implementation guidance
Results
Three websites have gone live so far, with a couple of other country websites scheduled for launch in the near future. The websites show an overall consistency in communicating the brand values and identity and all three focus on the specific communication goals.
Websites live so far:
- DHVGroup.com - group website, shows all DHV companies, labels and alliance partners;
- DHV.com - The main DHV website, showing the main international projects and other content;
- DHV.nl - The Dutch country website, focussing on projects within The Netherlands and/or run from the Dutch DHV offices.
Detailed activities
Concepting - After the overall information architecture concept was created, we worked together with our visual design partners Clever°Franke to come up with three design concepts, that differed in their approach on three levels: main communication values, visual style and interaction design. These three concepts were presented to and discussed with the project board and the management team of DHV;
Finalizing concept - Taking all the discussions and feedback into account, one final design concept was created. This was then signed off, so we could continue with the detailed design;
Detailed interaction design - A huge sitemap was created to list all types of pages within the site structure. The overall menu structure had to be defined for all three websites, and then all page templates were designed. Part of the detailed interaction design was also to define the different content types with their unique properties;
Detailed visual design - Based on the finalized and agreed upon design concept, detailed visual design was created for all of the page templates in the interaction design. Next to that, many icons and other smaller elements were designed, that should be used across all of DHV's sites;
Content strategy & management - The new DHV website is based around one huge container of content, which consists of different content types. Some of this content may be available in different languages, depending on the sites it should be shown in. A good approach of setting up the content in the CMS was key to making the site easy to maintain from DHV's point of view. Additionally, making sure the content creation (and migration) would start as soon as possible was important to successfully launch the website at the intended live date. Part of this process could only be done after the implementation partner was selected, but DHV did start to set up a content team in the early phases of the project;
RfP process & vendor selection - The detailed design specifications were part of the full Request for Proposal that was sent out to a number of technical parties. Some tight deadlines were set for the response, and User Intelligence helped to grade the responses and interview the shortlisted companies. Our experience with other implementation projects helped us ask different types of questions from these vendors;
Implementation guidance - During the implementation, we were part of the project team that did the reviews, thereby ensuring correct implementation of the designs and offering alternatives when technical limitations prohibited the implementation of certain features. User Intelligence feels that this close cooperation during the implementation phase is crucial to the success of a project.