Benchmarks
91
Google PageSpeed Score
Google's website performance benchmark
91 out of 100.A
WebPagetest Grade
Graded on site performance, page size and load times
A80
Website Grader Score
Calculated on general, mobile, SEO and security performance
80 out of 100.Brief
Brief
To help inform the citizens of Southend-on-Sea regarding the proposed planning policy changes the Borough Council needed a new website that was easy to use and allowed visitors to explore and understand a wealth of complex map-based data.
The new site also had to be easy for staff at the Council to update and maintain on a day-to-day basis so it needed a great content management system behind the scenes, a perfect fit for Craft CMS.
The most challenging aspect of the project was the need to translate exported mapping data from the Council's internal GIS system into a format that could be imported into Google Maps and presented as individual layers that could be enabled and disabled at will.
What we did
What we did
We began by designing and developing a framework site for the content and map-based data to be presented in. This had to be relatively fuss-free to ensure ample space was given to the various map-based pages as well as being responsive so it continued to function reliably on any device.
With the framework in place our focus switched to setting up the content pages - a simple task with a content management system like Craft - and then integrating the map data. The various layers of data had to be colour coded and developed in such a way that they could be enabled and disabled so that a visitor can isolate a single layer or see how multiple layers (effectively changes to planing) might affect one-another.
The converting of mapping file formats and integration into Google Maps did throw up several challenges but these were overcome and the resulting site has been a great success for Southend-on-Sea Borough Council and we continue to work with them to develop and enhance the site.
