The Livestock Event is held yearly at the NEC in Birmingham. It’s a massive event, attracting over 16,000 visitors last year, and is generally regarded as vital to the growth and success of the Diary industry in the UK.
We’ve built something for the hosting body, RABDF – the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers – that we’re really proud of. We’ve combined Ghost’s trademark bold, simple graphical style with a complete re-imagining of how a website could – and, we think, should – work. The result is a site that responds not only to different screen sizes and viewing media – check out how the whole site flows from mobile to desktop and everything in between – but presents information responsively, too. We’ve done away with the traditional ‘navigation menu’ and its maze of nested links. Instead, we’ve built an intuitive ‘filter system’. Clicking or tapping a filter reorganises the entire site to the user’s perceived need: meaning the most important info is given pride-of-place. Our usability studies suggest this is a massive boost to conversion: almost nobody drops off from landing page to registration, which is almost unheard of in the web world. People can find what they want, and access it in a way that makes sense. It’s unbelievably simple to use, and allows users to take a deep dive into almost anything within two clicks or fewer.
Technical
Things are pretty revolutionary on the technical side. We’ve built a completely bespoke system modelled around the way RABDF have worked in the past. Careful systemic analysis has helped us to design a process that automates much of the work they had to do before, saving countless man-hours over the next few years. Bookings, which previously have been taken via paper forms, invoices and manual communication – all massive time-sinks – can now be completed online, with careful attention to the user experience of completing long, complex, and ongoing forms. Users receive reminder emails if they leave a form part-way through, which encourages them to return to the process. Upselling opportunities are built into all levels of the booking process. We’ve integrated the bespoke system with Stripe, a US escrow payment provider, which has greatly improved RABDF’s ability to make accurate forecasts and keep tabs on money going out and coming in.
We’ve used truly cutting-edge technology across the whole site, including EmberJS, Ruby on Rails 4, Heroku, Gridforms, jQuery, codrops, and a bootload of completely custom engines written exclusively for the client. As a result, much of the site works offline – a key consideration when designing for rural Internet connections. The whole site is linked to a powerful administration system, which allows RABDF to make instant follow-ups on new bookings. Think site admin interface-cum-CRM system.
If you’d like to discuss how Ghost can help your company to optimise your existing business processes, feel free to get in touch on the number below.
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