Background

Oil & Gas are a national organisation, who provide information and updates to companies across their sector, including Government and industry stakeholders. They address issues within the Oil and Gas Industry and promote meetings and events within the sector to facilitate knowledge and understanding of their industry.

Our brief

Our brief for this website was to provide a redesign of an existing site, which housed a large amount of content. Our challenge was to bring the substantial content of the previous site into a new design, and restructure with a clear and simple navigation of up to 5 levels.

The new focus of the site was to bring more focus to Publications and Events and promote the benefits of being a Member. Together with these key areas, Oil & Gas UK required the flexibility to highlight specific areas of the website on the Home Page and in the left-hand column of the sub pages. Current news and media items needed to be served to users on the Home Page with more detail throughout the site.

Our approach

Our first priority was to create a clear structure for the website, around which the content could sit comfortably. This was achieved by providing a constant left-hand navigation, visible on every page of the site and a breadcrumb trail to retrace your path.

A search area is top right throughout and an extensive, and easy to use site map was developed to provide alternative navigation method.

The promotional aspects are addressed by using various tools and methods. A Flash based image module is used on the Home Page, with rotating promotion for Events, Newsletters, Membership and Publications - with click throughs to these promoted areas. The left-hand column has further entry points to membership, email updates and the publications area - both on the Home and sub-level pages. Events are highlighted in a diary format on the Home Page and the news and events are centre-stage in tabbed effect modules. This provides top level information from all areas, with the invitation to enter further for more detail.

As part of the development we also transferred existing functionality, such as the Publications eCommerce area, event bookings and other interactive search tools and features, which were re-skinned to fit seamlessly with the new design.