Website Re-design - Language Service Company

Overview Applied Language Solutions (ALS) is the world’s fastest growing localisation provider and one of the UK’s fastest growing private companies. Since its inception in 2003, the company has grown at an unprecedented pace, particularly for the industry it serves. This has been in part due to a huge online presence and delivering translation projects to customers through web based applications. The company is to undertake a complete redesign of its website [login to view URL], to develop its range of services and improve the way people use the site - maximising sales leads at every opportunity. Presently, the site experiences anything from 25,000 to 30,000 individual users per day, which illustrates the importance of the redesign. Though current traffic is encouraging, most views are for the free translation tool, which means there is much room for improving use of the site to encourage online quotes. The company therefore wishes to develop the user experience and strengthen the ALS brand in order to do this. Visually, the new website will incorporate video, strong corporate imagery and existing copy from high-ranking pages. Key Aims A key metric by which the website is - and will be – judged, is the number of web-quotes received through the quote page. Maximising the number of web-quotes will remain the primary focus of any redesign. The secondary aim is to incorporate video throughout the site so as not to conflict with corporate imagery or compromise site aesthetics in any way. The design must also take in to account principles of SEO so that the site can maintain and improve it’s current search engine rankings Appointing the winning designer Designers are required to submit their costs and submit their design proposals by no later than August 30th 2009 by email to . ALS has chosen to post this brief online in order to maintain a fair level for competition for all prospective designers, and will award the final work to the winning designer shortly after this date. ALS will not be liable for costs incurred in relation to the production of submitted proposals. Any technical queries or for information relating to the company should be directed to the above email address. The Design Brief Agencies are asked to produce a design proposal/mock-up(s) of 3 templates initially (Homepage, Quote Screen and Service (standard web) page) that completely updates the look of the existing site. Applied Language CMS will incorporate all existing content and new media into these templates. The successful designer will be commissioned to do more templates following this work. Part of the design work, once the company has appointed a designer, will be a redesign of various elements of the site, such as free translation tool, quote screen/form and various plug-ins. One main area of the website is the quote button, which must remain a prominent feature throughout the site (across all pages). The purposes of the templates are as follows: 1 – Homepage This must encapsulate ALS, by our services and expertise – providing quick links to areas on the site such as quote page, services, language pages and country guides) as well as a permanent ‘place’ for video on all pages. The homepage is where we wish for users to realise our brand values of pride and respect. Also the site should evoke a feel of professional services delivered by friendly, personable individuals. To quote one customer “You don’t just get services with ALS, you get the people” this is our aim for both new and familiar visitors to the site. 2 - Quote Process The quote form is currently split up into two sections on a dedicated section of the existing site, requiring the customer to enter the information required for us to produce a quote and enter their brief contact details. ALS has decided that the new quote form should be overlaid on the initial web page from wherever the visitor has initiated the quote process. i.e. The original web page should be viewed in the background/behind the quote form, throughout the quote process – disappearing once the quote process has finished. 3 - General Pages (for information giving) General Pages covering the range of Applied Language Solutions services, languages, country guides and information about the company are also intended to prompt quotes. These however must give a much more informative overview into the respective topic and must feature (as with other ‘headline’ pages) video. Navigation Presently, the navigation format for the site is inadequate for the level of content ALS has amassed over the past twelve months. ALS therefore require a fully accessible CSS drop-down menu, with the ability to expanded at a later date, that can be edited through the Umbraco CMS. Use of Video Designers are required to advise on video optimisation (SEO) and optimal size & positioning. Coding The new design should follow current accessibility and web standards and be cross-browser compatible. It should make full use of CSS and keep page mark-up to a minimum. The website is currently powered by an Umbraco CMS. This uses a series of templates to manage the look and feel of the site. The templates and their function are listed below: Base – contains site wide head tags and meta data and the site wide footer. MenuMaster – contains the site wide top menu BlankPlusMenu – blank template that just displays the top menu SubMaster – displays the top section including main title text, image and quote button SubMasterGreen – as above but in green which is used for the free resources section In addition to the above top level templates, the following additional templates are used in specific areas of the site, the redesign of which will be part of the full project: • Homepage – used for the homepage • General – used for general copy pages (eg /[login to view URL]) • Quote – used for the translation quote section (/[login to view URL]) • Top Level Categories – for top level category pages (eg /[login to view URL]) • Free Translation – used for free tools incuding: /[login to view URL] /[login to view URL] /[login to view URL] The current templates use placeholders to manage content through Umbraco. These will need to be incorporated into the new design and new placeholders can be created for new design elements if required.