SGF Journal: A blog about business, web, and technology.
SynergyOne Solutions: How it came together
Back in December, Steve Marshall of SynergyOne Solutions came to us with an interesting challenge. He had recently been hired as the marketing director of a local restoration firm and needed to upgrade the company's web presence. Sounds easy enough. However, the challenge came in that SynergyOne was a newly-formed parent company, made up of three other different-but-similar firms. The marketing decision was to brand ServTech, Aircare Services and New England Build and Restore under one new brand: SynergyOne Solutions. We were thrilled to get the opportunity to take the project on. Here's how it came together:
ARCHITECTURE
Getting our heads around the information architecture wasn't as bad as we first feared. In fact, the sites on their own were all fairly simple, relatively speaking (certainly nothing as wild as the original Quincy College sitemap, for example). Once we had a handle on how the site was to be built, though, it all came together fairly easily. Here's a peek in at a part of the sitemap:
THE CONCEPT
After kicking around a variety of ideas and requirements (multiple domains needed to stay intact, strong SynergyOne Solutions branding, but not such that the names of the three companies were completely removed, etc.), we arrived at the solution you can see online here. We love the way the Gap/Old Navy/Banana Republic/Piper Lime/Athleta system works, and definitely drew some inspiration from them.
In fact, from early on, the tabs concept worked for the client. Here's a screenshot of part of one of the original comps:
The rest of the site design circled around the client's preferences, photography, and the all-important rapid response form:
IMPLEMENTATION
All four sites are powered by a common ExpressionEngine Content Management System installation, making it a snap for the client to edit any content on any of the four sites on the network:
TOOLS USED
We used the following tools to build the site: Balsamiq Mockups for Information Architecture, Photoshop for graphic design, Coda for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and ExpressionEngine for content management.
WE CAN HELP YOU TOO
If you've got a complicated project, we're not afraid to talk about it. Drop us a line if you have any questions.
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