Company Web Site Design

Website Development Brief An Introduction: A long established company and a leading manufacturer of plastic plumbing products in New Zealand, through both extrusion and injection moulding. Complementary to this manufactured product is a range of imported agency lines of which Dux is the distributor for in New Zealand. Today’s product range can be defined into four distinct categories; Bathroomware, Kitchenware, Plumbing and Drainage. Combined this requires Dux to access both the retail and trade markets. Approximately 60% of our turnover is from our own manufactured product. Our “customers” are: plumbing merchants DIY merchants Plumbers Home owners Potential distributors of our products offshore (export) Our own staff seeking information on our products The company has a wholly owned subsidiary in Australia that has warehouse and sales offices in Brisbane (H/O), Sydney and Melbourne. Agents represent us in the remaining states. The subsiary has a similar product mix but does not distribute the agency lines that are manufactured in Australia – here the manufacturer distributes themselves. Our current website is a text based information resource. It was designed to be navigated using a 14.4K modem. Adequate then, but no-longer a suitable “first impression” for our customers above. What are we proud of? There are many “features and benefits” that make the company fairly unique – both as a manufacturer and distributor. Two NZ examples; firstly our H/O contains R & D, manufacturing and tool room, sales & marketing, national warehouse, accounts and administration. We have the ability to control product right through the chain as our own expertise allows us to problem solve internally, without the requirement to outsource many of the steps in our value chain. Secondly we have a warehouse and sales office in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch allowing each region an ability to total focus on and supply their local customers in full and on time. What’s been done so far? A considerable amount of work has already been done in the development of a new site. This includes developing a visual framework, flash animation and text. This Beta site has links setup already. It maybe appropriate to utilise some of this development into our new site. Many of the files can be taken as is, but work needs to be done to ensure the consistency of the design throughout and to ensure all the links works as they should. We are now in a position to accept quotations for the outsourcing of this work. What do we need in a website? The ability to link both the companies domain and the subsidiary's domain to similar sites, ideally hosted on the same server these must be tailored to suit each companies own product mix. The existing site is at [login to view URL] / [login to view URL] A site that is easily navigated as well as easily downloaded due to the number of end users who would be accessing our site from home computers A modern, welcoming, uncluttered style The ability to utilise a “search for” Link to Master plumbers and Master Builders websites, ie “Find a Plumber” The ability to update the site ourselves (we have MS FrontPage) Would like to incorporate a flash animation – but only if home users could download the information quickly Clear definitions between traditional website headers, ie Company Profile, Products, Contact Us etc. Clear differentiation between the products we manufacture and those we are an agency distributor for. Agency line information must be contained within the DIL / Aquadux sites A PDF of our brochures must be available to download Site could maybe incorporate a theme which in turn could flow on through our brochures May need to update photography to give a better image of our products Company profile and History timeline to be included