Profile

The V&A Waterfront is a unique mixed-use harbour development that hosts 20 million visitors per year and is acknowledged as the biggest tourist destination in South Africa. The positioning of the organisation is to be the clear market leader across a broad range of segments: retail, commercial property, external consulting, conferencing, residential, tourism and entertainment. more...

Objectives

Having being deeply involved in the development of their previous site for over a year, I was accustomed with the limitations and problems that it presented to it's users and those involved in maintaining it. Like the V&A Waterfront itself, a veritable theatre of activity, the website is updated on a daily basis and new site sections are launched almost weekly.

I therefore kept three primary goals in mind when designing the new site: (1) To build a fluid and flexible layout which could evolve and expand without changing the basic design, (2) To build a usable, navigatable, accessible and light (in download time) - but visually rich - site which conformed to W3C web standards, and lastly (3) To give the V&A Waterfront a strong, well-defined presence online and in-line with their strict branding guidelines.

Features & End Result

The resultant site is built upon a robust and scalable OS technology foundation to accommodate future growth and development. It features comprehensive content management via a database-driven administration system. The site also provides an ever-growing list of valuable features:

• Template based catalogue for 400+ retail outlets
• Online booking engine for 70+ restaurants
• Dynamic Events Calendar (updated Monthly)
• User Registration Module
• SMS utilities
• Online postcard service
• Search engine
• Microsites: Tourism Centre, Flower Show, Wine Festival, Boat Show, Food Festival, W magazine