Profession
- Marine services
Services
- Research
- Design
- Development
Country
- Cyprus
Apollo Victory
I worked closely with Apollo Victory since 2010 and I helped them build their I.T. infrastructure, harden their security and build their SharePoint intranet.
Their website was designed in 2018 as a one-page website and 5 years later it was time for a complete overhaul.
The main reasons for the redesign were:
the one-page website was insufficient to cover the company’s wide range of services and expertise
there was no clear message as to the company’s expertise in the various sectors of marine design and naval architecture
Client
Apollo Victory Nautical Services
Scope
Website Redesign
Deliverables
Copywriting, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Analytics, Office 365 integration
Before
After
01.
Research Stage
Outdated design
The first impression when visiting the page wasn’t enough to leave a good impression on the visitors
Lack of information
A one-page website was insufficient to showcase the vast experience the company had
Responsive design
The website had several responsive issues that made it difficult to view from a mobile phone
SEO
There was a lot of room for improvement in regards to search engine optimization
02.
Understanding the goals
Inform the visitors
The main objective was to showcase the company’s vast experience and expertise in the field of marine design and naval architecture.
Data collection
The company had no data as to how the visitors were using the page since there were no analytics and no user behavior tracking tools installed.
Mobile friendly website
The previous version of the website was mobile friendly but had several inconsistencies that were making the use of the website hard.
Expertise showcase
With the use of case studies, the company would be able to show its expertise in the field of building ships.
03.
Keeping what works
Old URLs redirect
All the old URLs (links) where given a 301 value to maintain search engine ranking This was important because the website had to keep its 5 year keywords ranking.
Keywords
The website was already ranking for some keywords in the search engine results page (Google, Bing). Everything was carefully planned and redirected to maintain the SEO results.
Google Webmaster Tools
I added the website on Google Webmaster Tools to monitor the way that visitors find the page on Google and the search terms that they use.
Google Analytics Integration
The website was added to Google Analytics to collect, analyze and assess the way the visitors are using the website. This helped avoid the guesswork of what works and what is not.
04.
Preparation and execution
Platform
The website was built on WordPress which is the CMS of choice for me as well as millions of other websites.
Design System
Due to the huge amount of pages (18 total), the different layouts and large set of information, the design was first put into Figma so we could agree and expedite the development process.
Staging
For the developement of the new website I used a subdomain (newsite.apollovictory.com) giving access to the company’s executives to view the progress live.
User Personas
There were a in-depth analysis of the ideal client of the website which helped in the whole design process, the structure, the user journey and the tone of voice.
Color palette
We based the color palette on the company’s existing logo with shades of blue and added the #c35f0f (orange) for the accents.
#0f73c3
#0c5c9c
#c35f0f
#1c1c1c
#dddddd
#f2f2f2
Font
For the font family we chose ‘Inter’ for its clean look and bold letters. The headings use the bold version of ‘Inter Tight’ and for the main text we went with ‘Inter Normal’.
Inter Tight Bold
Aa
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Inter Tight Regular
Aa
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Inter Regular
Aa
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Technologies
Under the hood, this website is full of technology that helps it in delighting the visitor and rank higher in search engines results.
WordPress CMS
- Salient theme
- English language
- Cookies and GDPR
Google Optimized
- Google Analytics 4
- Google Search Console
- SEO
Custom CSS
I wrote several lines of Custom CSS for adjustments that were not possible through the standard configuration.
Speed Enhancements
- Page caching
- Javascript & CSS Minification
- Image resizing and compression
