Genesis Analytics is an economics-based business consultancy staffed by a team of very smart economists who offer myriad services in sectors ranging from financials to climate change and energy infrastructure in Africa.
In its website overhaul brief to Flow, the client asked us to “make what we do simple to understand” as part of upgrading and modernising its outdated site.
“There was a vast amount of information describing what Genesis Analytics does, and our challenge was to present this on a website where it would be easy to find and digest,” says project manager Gail Cameron. An associated challenge was the attention to detail required on the site.
“The use of patterns speaks to Genesis’s business of analytics. It finds patterns that work for its clients as business solutions,” says designer Clement Nkoko.
“The design idea was to associate patterns in nature and everyday life with the Genesis brand. We displayed these carefully chosen images on a home-page slider along with short descriptions.
Clement also used negative space and narrowed the main section to reduce the appearance of the content, while brand colours were used for highlights and to differentiate sections.
“I then employed a container style of design, the card system, which is a comprehensive way of organising content, be it large images, headlines or content. It is ideal for mobile and responsive design because the user feels at ease consuming vast amounts of content in small containers,” says Clement.
From developer Alison Weir-Smith’s perspective, the new Genesis website challenged her ability to organise information in a logical fashion when faced with a multitude of overlapping areas of expertise and services.
“However, with a little brainstorming, the site has been built in such a way that the content management is simple while the complex relationships between the various services and sectors are shown neatly on the front end," says Alison.
“And, of course, in true Flow fashion the site is fully mobile and will work on any device – even old versions of Safari – thanks to the use of bootstrap and plenty of media queries to make it all happen."
“We enjoyed working with the Genesis staff – all of whom have master's degrees in economics – as they were friendly and readily helped with information when required," says Gail.
“The finished product has achieved our aim of making vast amounts of information readily accessible by simplifying the user journey. Header slides on the site show off some of the amazing projects that Genesis Analytics has worked on."
The new website, www.genesis-analytics.com, went live at the start of July 2016. Flow will continue working with Genesis Analytics by providing ongoing web maintenance on its site and helping to “unlock value in Africa”.
