New multilingual website launched for BSHF
We’re pleased to announce the launch of the new website for The Building and Social Housing Foundation. BSHF are an independent research organisation who promote sustainable development and innovation in housing. The project merged their two previous sites into a single responsive WordPress build, with dedicated translations in French and Spanish.
Project stats at a glance
Below are some key project stats comparing the new site to their previous sites:
- Pages viewed per session +18%
- Time spent on the site (session duration) +57%
- Mobile engagement (traffic) +38
- Mobile engagement (session duration) +74%
Usability testing
The days of the client and agency agreeing the design in isolation are long gone. Our process involves testing the effectiveness of the design at key stages (the digital equivalent of focus groups). For BSHF, we firstly tested the wireframes using heatmap software to capture user interaction. This influenced how the wireframes developed into the UI. Another round of testing was conducted on the creative prior to undertaking technical development.
FacetWP Integration
There are over 2,000 pages spread across the two previous sites. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find the rich content within the site, FacetWP ticked all the right boxes. FacetWP offers fast filtering and a better user experience, here are some reasons why:
- The plugin works with any theme
- Provides an efficient and faster search because it isn’t reliant on a page refresh
- It uses your existing custom fields and taxonomies
- The plugin offers a high level of customisation
- It integrates well with other plugins
- FacetWP has a range of facet types, including sliders, checkboxes, boxes and date ranges
An example of FacetWP on the BSHF winners and finalists page
WPML plugin
WPML is the most reputable multilingual solution for the WordPress platform. This plugin was used to handle the translations on the site. The BSHF site can currently be used by English, French and Spanish speakers, the scope of the plugin however is much wider. The plugin provides 40 languages as standard and the ability to custom build those languages that aren’t available. Read our blog on creating international websites.
Can we help you with any future projects?
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