Large b2b website goes Processwire

[ChiefPundit]

The Background
In April 2015, we were asked by CSDC Systems, to revamp their website.

CSDC Systems is a Toronto-based company selling cloud-powered, process improvement technology to local governments, regulatory institutions,
courts, universities, and granting agencies all over the world.

CSDC Systems had a website that was built on Drupal 7.x, was difficult to update internally by their staff, had maintenance issues apart from being a very design dated website.

The Objectives
>> Create a modern, world-class website that sells CSDC's Solutions
>> Highlight the benefits and advantages of the solutions and the company
>> Make the site responsive and browsable across devices
>> Give them a system that could be updated by non-technical users in their company.

The Challenges
>> Re-architect the entire website to make it usable by b2b clients
>> Rewrite the copy with pain/gain/ benefits orientation
>> Redesign to make it more visually appealing despite long copy
>> Get results

Re-imagining the CSDC Systems Website
>> The old site had 350 pages of information with the bulk of it being blogs/ news. Blogs and News were ported and reformatted to make it visually appealing.
>> 120 pages of copy to do with Solutions, Services, Platform, Case Studies and Whitepapers were rewritten and visualized ground up
>> The persuasion structure with social proof - testimonials, Case Studies, Why CSDC was re-imagined and then reconstructed

The Technology
>> This was more a fairly large, prestigious, communications-driven website without any major technology challenges.
>> The site uses Processwire CMS with Foundation 5 CSS framework
>> The front-end page structure and design were mirrored using repeaters and fields at the backend.
>> Forms, Profields, Autolinks, Tags, SEO are some of the plugins used
>> The site uses ProCache.

The Result
The tutorial for the client over Skype lasted one hour and the happy part is that they are up and way confidently after that. The client's response:

I was surprised that the site administration could be so intuitive and manageable by anyone with little technical knowledge.

Coming from an old Drupal website, we shall take that as a true compliment for Processwire.

The site is blazing fast. Records A: 94% on Google Page Speed and A: 92% on YSlow at GTMetrix. A nifty 1.6s load time with proCache turned on.

You can view the new site at: http://www.csdcsystems.com/

[SiNNuT]

Cool story and a nice end result.

[ChiefPundit]

Pleasure @Sinnut. And to all those who liked this, thanks.

[Mike Rockett]

Quite nice indeed, though I have a few suggestions/recommendations:

1. Fonts are inconsistent. Some areas use Open Sans, others use Droid (which defaults to serif and has no @font-face). (Though, at a second glance, I see that there are references to "Droid, serif" where it should be "Droid Serif, serif" - I take it "Droid" is not a font, which is why its defaulting back to serif (in my case, Times New Roman, which is a terrible font)).
2. The shadow under the main menu (nav bar and drop-down) is at a 45-degree angle, leaving an area of whitespace to the left of the shadow - doesn't look natural. I recommend changing that shadow to: box-shadow: 2px 0px 14px rgba(0,0,0,0.2)
3. The submit button in the footer needs extra styling - specifically, a border is needed there.
4. The two rows of white blocks with the learn more buttons should have a transparent border applied. Why? Because when you hover over them, a new border is applied, and the text moves down. Applying a transparent or white border should resolve that.
5. I think that the search box could do with some more work... It's quite small, and doesn't seem to fit nicely in the navigation/header bar.
6. On content pages, I think the breadcrumbs bar could do with a light grey background.
7. The sitemap list could do with some styling - perhaps some custom bullets or block elements would help on that front.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Well, that's all that is prominent to me at the moment.

Otherwise, nice site, and congrats on the release.

Quick tip: Your post content is in a code block, which means I have to scroll left and right to read the content...

[ChiefPundit]

Thanks Mike for all the lovely suggestions for improvement. Will heed.

I managed to exit the code block:-). Thanks.

[Mike Rockett]

Thanks Mike for all the lovely suggestions for improvement. Will heed.

I managed to exit the code block:-). Thanks.

You're very welcome indeed.