client real assurance
website www.realassurance.org.uk
sector non-governmental
Real Assurance
The REAL Assurance Scheme was set up by the Renewable Energy Association with the aim of guaranteeing a high quality experience for consumers wishing to buy or lease small generation units for home, community centre or small business use.
The Brief
REAL wanted a simple, accessible and environmentally friendly site that would give easy access to information both for consumers and those in the industry. All code was to be tremendously efficient as the website needed to be viewed quickly at most connection speeds on a wide variety of devices.
Vital aspects of the design were as follows:
- the site had to be incredibly 'Printer Friendly' to ensure maximum distribution of the Consumer Code
- it had to contain a simple and easily navigable database of REAL members
Website \ Accessibility \ Printability
The REAL site was developed to allow the creation of media-specific styles for any document. In effect, the site appears differently when viewed on a PC, a hand-held PDA, or when printed. This means that long, in-depth content such as the Consumer Code and Consumer Guide can be printed as a fully-branded document, free of unnecessary imagery and menus.
Why is this so clever?
Some sites have a button for a 'printer friendly version', allowing you to load up the information in a new, less cluttered print format. Although this gives you the information you want in the way you want it, the document has had to be changed by a person or programme to make it suitable for printing. In effect, you're designing and formatting your content twice.
The REAL site is different. It uses media-specific styles for a single document. The website recognises who or what you're trying to do with it, and formats itself automatically to best suit the medium. That way the Consumer Code looks completely different on a computer monitor as it does when you click print. Why not give it a go? It's a cracking good read and may prove useful should you decide to turn that old garden water feature into your neighbourhood's first ever hydroelectric power plant.
Member Database
The member database was designed in an open, accessible format to help people get the information they need as easily as possible. As the scheme grows, hundreds of companies will be added to the database, so a simple search function was crucial.
The parent database that feeds data into the site was already in existence before we appeared on the scene. Rather than insisting on a separate database for the site, we created software that could use their existing database and updating techniques. That way no one has to duplicate the entry of information, which makes it simple to update and minimises the number of man hours required to maintain the website.
is a registered trademark |