client hedsor house
website www.hedsor.com
sector estate
Hedsor House
Hedsor House is one of the UK's premier film and conference locations. Each year it plays host to hordes of actors, marketers and business people who come to make movies, launch products and party. Though not necessarily at the same time.
SAV developed the first Hedsor House website in 2004. It proved very successful; attracting visitors, interest and business. When it was time to enhance the site, Hedsor turned to SAV again.
The Brief
The website was already very successful. Its design was well liked by Hedsor staff and clients and navigation was very straightforward.
Hedsor primarily wanted to update content and add new types of media, such as video. They also chose to modernise the design and add improved functionality. We had to achieve these goals while maintaining the original look and feel and ensuring that usability was not affected.
The solution
Hedsor provided us with new, extremely attractive photography from the events they had hosted since the previous site was designed. We used this as the basis for the update; the design remains faithful to the original while drawing attention to the main image on each page.
Behind the scenes we updated the site to the latest web standards, ensuring that it is highly accessible and easily catalogued by search engines. Doing things this way also allowed us to incorporate a 'print style sheet'. In plain English this means that if you click print anywhere on the Hedsor website, a branded document - without the menus - comes out of the printer. No configuration or PDFs necessary.
Image gallery
The site features an image gallery with views of the house and gardens. We used categories and thumbnails to make it easily navigable. Images are displayed clearly and elegantly.
Video
Hedsor wanted to incorporate a slideshow of the house and gardens in video form. By using the same technology as popular video sharing sites, we ensured it would be accessible to as many users as possible. It also loads very quickly (dependent, of course, on the viewer's internet connection).
Maps
We used Google technology for the Hedsor House location map and implemented it in a quite unique way. The map is integrated tightly with the website, occupying the same position as images on the other pages. Google Maps is familiar to internet users as well as being easy to use and functional, which made it a natural choice.
We also provided directions for different journeys to Hedsor. When each journey link is clicked, the map shows the route and detailed instructions are given below it. The print functionality of the website really comes into its own here; a user's chosen directions will be printed in a convenient format for the car, with the map included.
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