Implementing a refreshed visual identity and enhanced user experience through a practical digital service offering.
Built in Drupal 9
Small Business Development Corporation (SBDC) is an independent statutory body that provides vital support services to small business owners in Western Australia. Through business advisory, workshops, support and advocacy, SBDC ensures small businesses can not only survive but thrive.
SBDC's online content requirements are complex due to SBDC providing a diverse range of services to an extremely broad audience.
The old website was difficult to navigate and locate relevant information, and created customer service requests that would normally be served through a well structured public website.
Doghouse collaborated closely with the SBDC team to design and develop a contemporary website in Drupal 9 to meet future site requirements, while delivering the functionality to address shifting user requirements through COVID lockdowns and transitions. A phased delivery approach started with an initial site discovery and design phase necessary to scope the requirements for development.
Provide user-centered online information and services through improved information architecture, user experience and digital service capabilities
Increase digital take-up through improving customer journeys and site functionality to reduce traditional customer service requests
Implement a simple to use backend interface with a variety of page templates and content components. Structure content heavy pages in a clear and engaging way
Simplify navigation with a variety of custom content types and intuitively restructure a content heavy website
Improve the website to be fully accessible on mobile, tablet, laptop and desktop devices and comply with WCAG 2.0 AA standards
Clever user experience and engaging web design transformed the former content-heavy website into an enlightening and intuitive digital platform, meeting the needs of small business owners and other stakeholders using the website as a single source of truth for business regulations.
Implementation of advanced search functionality, supporting fuzzy matching, search autocomplete, search keywords fields to rank certain search results higher with the ability to prioritise certain content types in search results.
Search facets were also applied to filter the search results page, and collectively this functionality dramatically improved the search experience.
We utilised District CMS which is built on Drupal 9’s mature content management framework and delivers an improved administration experience through a number of custom modules and admin interface improvements.
Whilst highly configurable through a component-driven architecture, District CMS helps future-proof Drupal sites through a constantly growing list of modules and integrations.
Doghouse developed a number of seamless integrations and content functions to improve content delivery. Eventbrite was integrated into Drupal CMS to support online workshop bookings and administration.
Document management was implemented to create a document library for ‘templates, tools and guides’ displaying internal and external online resources.
And finally through simplified navigation and a variety of custom content types, we intuitively restructured a content heavy website.
Through a combination of research, user-centered design and technology, we re-engineered the site from the ground up. The new website has been extremely well received and now plays a critical role in supporting Western Australian small businesses through the current pandemic and beyond.
