Steinbach Credit Union has relaunched its website with a new look. In preparation for a change in its online banking software and after four years with its previous layout, SCU was looking for a fresh look. The latest version of the SCU site has provided SCU with our new and improved Catalyst 4.0 Content Management System.
The new CMS provides them with substantial flexibility in placing their content throughout the site. The content administration is very straight forward and keeps the content separate from the design and layout which allows the site to have a cohesive look during the maintenance and updating of their content.
The design presented us with some specific coding and stylistic challenges.
The home page displaying the three section options had to display horizontally centred dependent on how tall the browser window was set, and if the user changed the size of the window, the positioning would adjust to compensate. Using some specific javascript and css rules we were able to accomplish this. Once we had it working in highly standards compliant browsers we moved on to making it work on those browsers that have not yet worked out all of their standards issues.
On the three landing pages we were asked to provide some customization functionality in order to personalize the user’s experience on the site. We built and provided a few widgets for this personalization. For those people who registered to customize their landing pages, they can choose from up to three little widgets at this point.
There is a Stock Watch, Weather and Currency Conversion widget to choose from.
Additional touches to the site included some javascript functionality to slide content left and right so as not to have the page scroll. With some creative css and javascript coding we were able to achieve a site that while some pages require scrolling, the navigation and footer do not move or disappear allowing the user to have constant access to their navigation.
In a number of cases the design which we had to apply to the site was somewhat counter-intuitive to what is standard practice in web development, however with a lot of work we were able to provide SCU with the design they wanted working the way they wanted. It must be remembered at all times in the service industry that the client’s perception is always correct.