Yesterday we flicked the on switch of the new Sure Guernsey Directory website. As the culmination of three months of solid effort, it is something we are immensely proud of.
Our most complex project to date, we took a clean slate, re-designed and re-built the website from scratch, 100% in-house.
The Sure brand from Cable & Wireless has an extensive set of guidelines, which we adhered to throught the design process. They were applied to every custom design element, from the A-Z navigation interface to the new Guernsey Directory logo.
Working to Sure's requirements, we developed the site on a Microsoft platform, harnessing the power of their latest web development platform, ASP.NET MVC.
The first step in the process was to design and build a reliable search algorithm based around the structure of Sure's existing directory database. This algorithm was then integrated into the front end website along with a selection of other useful features including:
- Integration with a database of over 200,000 synonyms
- Intelligent search box suggestion drop down that populates itself as you type
- Suggested searches for when you do not get any results
The website also offers some pretty awesome front-end UI features such as:
- AJAX driven category browser for quick, easy to use access to a large amount of data
- Deep Google maps integration for placing of various locations on the map
If you have an entry in the Sure Guernsey directory you can place yourself on the map too by following the simple registration process.
Go and have a play, we are already using it as part of our day to day business.
