Shoreditch Town Hall tapped into our technical expertise to ensure that their new website was as accessible and available to as many users as possible

Overview

Shoreditch is a historic area of central London. The Town Hall is an imposing, fully restored Victorian building on Old Street, used as a venue for social gatherings and corporate events.

The Town Hall is at the hub of a vibrant community and the new site needed reflect the diversity and heritage of the building itself and the community that use it.

Objectives/Approach:

Shoreditch Town Hall is a client of Orangutan Studio (one of our strategic partners). As part of a comprehensive site redesign we were asked to create new XHTML/CSS templates that would meet the client's stringent usability and accessibility requirements.

The whole community would be using the site on a regular basis, so it was important that all the templates conformed to WC3, AAA accessibility guidelines for people with disabilities.

The new templates needed to be integrated into an existing third-party content management system, so we developed them in a modular fashion allowing the developers to re-use core components quickly and easily. Comprehensive comments were added to the code, allowing developers (now and in the future) to understand it and make updates easily.

Results

Shoreditch Town Hall's site now presents information quickly and clearly too all visitors. A richer more interactive user experience is provided by the practical use of Web 2.0 technologies resulting in:

• A significant uplift in enquires and event bookings
• More repeat visits
• Improved search engine visibility
• Longer visitor sessions and better tracking