When looking for an agency to design our website we needed one who could take an innovative approach to showcasing our developments in a way where most other property websites failed. Pixelwork were great at taking our concept, then visualising and engineering it into a website that we’re really proud of.
Adam Lawrence, Chief Executive, London Square
OVERVIEW
London Square are London’s newest property development company and needed a new website design to showcase their latest and upcoming developments. During initial discussions with the client they felt strongly that there wasn’t a property based website out there that really showcased their floorplans in an intuitive or user efficient way.
During our research we agreed.
Despite the plethora of big property sites in the UK they all displayed their floorplans in a really clunky way with little interactivity, or if there was some then it just seemed bolted on with little thought on how it really should be implemented; across the board they all seemed a case of interactivity for interactivity’s sake.
The site design also had to be entirely in black and white, a requirement of the brand which our designers initially found challenging being so used to working in a multitude of rich colour palettes. They actually found it really refreshing to be constrained in this way.
We turned to Expression Engine as our framework for the system. We knew this could easily handle the core content and administration but we needed a way to be able to administer the custom built floorplans. We also couldn’t build the plans in Flash, the client specifically requested the site work on an iPad and iPhone so this made us realise at the outset that we had to think more creatively.
THE FLOORPLAN CHALLENGE
We developed the floorplans utilising a brand new technique that is so innovative we’re keeping it under our hat, although the core functionality is obvious (JQuery, Javascript etc.) we developed a new way to dynamically build the floors on the fly that we just haven’t seen done before and it makes a huge difference to the actual quality of the displayed plans and you don’t lose any functionality when you switch to iPad or iPhone !
We also wanted to make use of Google maps but we couldn’t have any colour displayed so we stripped out all of the colour palette from Google, locked down the level of zoom and panability and tied the management of the map into the core CMS. Along with a custom panorama (fully controlled by the CMS) and image galleries it’s a very slick looking site.
However the simplicity and cleanness of the site underlies the cleverness of what’s really going on behind the scenes.
THE FINISHED SITE
A very contemporary modern site that by utilising a simple colour palette has had great reviews from not only the client and internal team but also the wider audience. It works super efficiently on iPad and iPhone as well as desktops and most importantly has an underlying framework that we’ve really pushed to the max in handling the content and displaying it in a user-centric and focused direction.
It was a finalist on the Property Marketing Awards for best website (up against The Shard and the Candy Brothers) and also for the Wirehive 100.
We’re really pleased with this site, we’re looking at expanding it as more of London Square’s developments come online and working with the client on introducing further innovative digital solutions as their business grows and develops…Exciting times…
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