Limerick.ie – Helping locals, tourists and everyone keen to discover Limerick

The previous iteration of Limerick.ie suffered some serious issues in terms of how long it took pages to load, a poor editor experience when adding new content, and an inflexibility for editors to choose design layouts on a per page basis. To address these issues, Annertech completely redeveloped the site in Drupal 8, revolutionising the look and feel by adapting static designs into a responsive theme and completely rebuilding functionality from the ground up to satisfy both the user's and the stakeholder's needs.

This work involved architecting a solution that would breathe life into static designs, creating a theme and adapting the designs as necessary for real-world application while ensuring dynamic functionality that was in tune with user needs. We ensured that the solution made the content editors' workflow as effortless as possible, allowing them to create rich and meaningful content with ease.

All the content from the old site was then mapped and migrated into the new site and thoroughly tested to ensure that the transferred content was correct and in tune with the new design.

One of the main challenges when developing the site was how to clearly display diverse content to a wide and varied target audience. Central to the new site is the navigation approach, allowing users to navigate easily between the three main sections of the site, Discover, Business and Council, at all times. Limerick.ie is constructed in a way that visually represents Limerick’s uniqueness and sense of community to a global audience, using impartial content with multi-language capability.

Annertech reorganised, refined and flattened the website architecture to better serve the users, bringing crucial content, previously deeply embedded in the structure, to the forefront. We implemented filters, natural language forms, advanced search and more informative and appropriate labelling to give users a better experience and content discovery. It contains a “My Limerick” section for users to login so they can create and view their council cases.

A separate visual language was established for each of the three sections, including colour palettes, image / illustration styles, patterns and use of language. While each remained distinct, with design commonalities, they also communicate that they are connected under the one brand.

Results

Since launch, Limerick.ie has been named as one of the world’s Top 25 best tourism websites for 2017 by the travel industry global intelligence platform Skift.com. It won a Chambers Ireland Excellence in Local Government Award for Outstanding Customer Service and was shortlisted for a Spiders Award in the Best in User Experience category.