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Redesigning The ECDIS Ltd Website

Improving the ECDIS website was one of the original priorities I had when I first started here back in April last year, although it soon became clear that we wanted to do a bit more than just improve the site and it was in August 2014 that we decided to fully redesign it.

We wanted to “go against the flow” of other maritime training sites, and create a clean, open, spacious site, with a modern design and a colour scheme to tie in with our corporate theme. We also created a colour scheme for the courses in the new brochure and wanted to reflect that on the site.

The website has had several changes; however the first major stage only took around a month, as the majority of the content was already there. We’ve been live with the new site now for around 4 months, although there’s been a lot added to it since the initial visual re-design in September 2014. One of the main reasons for changing the design of the website was that the previous version wasn’t compatible with expansion. The latest update to the site followed the completion of the 2015 courses, products and services brochure, which included a large range of new courses developed for the New Year.

Over the next years we plan to constantly expand the site, adding videos and mini sites all within the main ECDIS website. We are currently designing mini sites for both the Port Creation and Simulator Builds which will independently stand alone, separate from the main site, but will both follow the design and feel of our current site.

About The Author


Mike Backhouse

I am a web geek, with a love of art & design, and have been designing websites for over 10 years. With the stereotypical loves of Star Trek and other sci-fi, I also play the saxophone in my spare time, love jazz and am actively involved with my local Church.

Mike BackhouseWeb Designer

 

 

Development and creation of the 2015 ECDIS Ltd Brochure

2015 has seen major changes for ECDIS ltd, with a significant increase in new courses and additional products & services added to our portfolio; including vessel creation and auditing. As such, our prospectus was in need of a major redesign. Amy Shelton, our Head of Marketing was tasked with this massive undertaking…

When I initially joined the marketing department one of the first tasks I was given was the job of overhauling the course and company marketing content, both online and for the 2014 prospectus. The design and content from the 2014 brochure was used as the initial inspiration for this year’s brochure, and as such, when it came to gathering the content, the majority of the fundamental work had already been done.

In addition to our pre-existing material, we thought outside the box and looked at various other brochures and also took inspiration from restaurant menus and hotel brochures! This was done as we wanted something user friendly and visually pleasing and we have always wanted to stand out from the crowd.

I learnt an awful lot creating last year’s brochure – it was the first real marketing material of any length that we had created at ECDIS Ltd so there was quite a lot of content to include. The main thing we really took away from it was that it needed to be clear and accessible to our clients – as such, this year we focused a lot on the organisation of the content.

Gathering all the information for the new courses and getting everything together in time for the print deadline was definitely a momentous challenge. All our trainers teach weekly either here or abroad so finding time to collect course content off them was difficult. We also didn’t want to produce something that was too heavy for people to want to take away, so narrowing the content down took a lot of discussion!

Before both the re-design of the website and creation of the new brochure, we had several marketing meetings about the new style that we wanted to incorporate into both projects. The website was re-designed first, which gave a basis for the visuals, meaning that designing the colours for the new brochure ran smoothly. Across both platforms we have added colour coding to our courses and used recognisable headings to increase the usability for our customers.

2014 was a really busy year for us, so when discussing the new brochure it was obvious to us that we had to include the wide range of new products and services. This gave us a huge amount of content to work with, but we’ve got a great team here so narrowing it down and getting all the right information wasn’t too much work; after plenty of planning and very long meetings!

To request a digital or printed copy of the ECDIS Ltd 2015 Brochure, please visit www.ecdis.org/request-brochure

About The Author


Amy Shelton
Amy SheltonHead of Marketing