At Wibble, we have grown as a studio throughout the years. Our clients are bigger, our team is bigger, and our ambitions are bigger. While we continue to strive to be the best web design studio on the island of Ireland, most of this is due to our great team of Web Designers, Web Developers, Support Agents, and Project Managers. The proof of this is in our substantial list of great clients that have come to us wanting a Wibble-designed site from a team at the top of their game. One of those clients was Germinal.
Germinal is a seed specialist providing market-leading solutions for the agricultural and amenity sectors. Operating directly in Great Britain, Ireland and New Zealand, Germinal has working partnerships in over 25 countries.
Towards the end of 2024, Germinal approached Wibble to take on the challenge of updating their websites to highlight their new range of products and their commitment to their science-focused strategy for environmentally sustainable practices in the agriculture sector. Partnering with Journey For, a Belfast-based creative studio, who were tasked with refreshing the brand for Germinal’s modern evolving vision, our talented design team at Wibble set out to craft a website that’s unique, accessible, and contemporary.
Over the years, Wibble has refined and improved our design process to such a degree that it rarely throws up any issues, regardless of project size. We may be a small team, but this gives us the benefit of dedicating our resources to a project. We have an open narrative at all times with our clients, allowing for great communication and understanding of each other’s processes before we begin. It creates a welcoming environment where all parties know what to expect. You can learn more about the Wibble Design process on our dedicated page.
Like all of Wibble’s projects, the backbone of starting the design is the research. From reviewing competitors’ websites in a similar field to our clients, reviewing best practices with more science-leaning companies, and e-commerce websites for best practices when presenting products to customers. Although this site wasn’t to be an e-commerce site, casting a wide net allowed us to draw a lot of inspiration from some places we wouldn’t have considered.
While checking out the competition, we also reviewed Germinal’s current website. When a client has had a previous site, it is important to review a few things:
The old site was fit for purpose at one time, but changing customer practices, new product lines, and a new brand image for Germinal – the site needed an update. Navigating the old site had become an issue as more products were added. It would take a user more than 3 clicks to get to any given area of the website; known as the ‘3-click rule’. Site speed, modern accessibility guidelines, and responsiveness would all need to be updated to future-proof the website.
The presentation of products was a key issue that would need to be addressed. Working with the team at Germinal, a simplified sitemap was created for all the sites. Their product ranges had narrowed to 6 main product lines under the moniker of “Grass and Forage”.
Each line of products is named:
All other products would include the legacy items still used by customers; however, the main focus of the site would be the Climate Smart Range, which would receive top billing throughout.
Accessibility was also an issue that needed to be addressed. The “Germinal Green” was not the most accessible colour, but being the brand colour, a round of problem-solving was needed. We knew the client wanted a clean, science-leaning style website, but we still needed it to be Germinal through and through. Working with the clients and Journey For, we pressed the importance of accessibility. At Wibble, we design and develop all our websites per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) international standard. It is something we pride ourselves on. If a colour within the brand guidelines does not pass, we can tailor a solution that will. We delve more into “The Importance of web accessibility in web design at wibble” in a previous blog.
We provide all our clients with a style guide that shows what colours are locked in to be used on the site, as well as a breakdown of their colour contrast for accessibility. This is also very helpful for our web developers as it provides them with a cheat sheet of what can be used on the site when it comes to the building stage.
This is where the fun begins. At Wibble, we always start with the design of the homepage first. Although we don’t want to judge a book by its cover, the homepage sets the tone for the rest of the website. It allows the client to see the vision we have planned for the rest of the site. We generally offer three iterations of the homepage to clients. Luckily, we’ve never really needed them, with most homepages being signed off with version 1 or 2.
We wanted to make it much more user-friendly when finding products. A mega menu was designed for “Grass and Forage”, clearly highlighting the main products. We wanted users to get to the desired product within 1 or 2 clicks. Through clever use of imagery and categorisation, we achieved what we set out to do.
CTA’s, news, insights, and product cards were all designed at the homepage stage. We wanted to create cards or blocks that could be universally adapted throughout the website. User experience was key to the design of the website. The client needed to retain its current customer base while growing a new one with out alienating either. A balance of bringing in the new while embracing the legacy site was decided. Everything was designed with accesibility, future-proofing and site speed in mind.
We provide all our design project clients with a full interactive prototype through Figma. It allows for the client to move through the concept as though it were the live site. Providing interactions such as hover effect on buttons, scrollable pages, and interactive menus. We have found that we generally get much speedier feedback using this method. As well as being able to share our vision for the website to the fullest at the design stage.
Working with Germinal and Journey For from the beginning of the project allowed us to keep the original vision of the new site moving forward with very few stages of stoping because an element was not working. We went through everything as one big team and came out with a great websites that fit the needs of all involved.
Once the concept was signed off by all parties involved we moved on to the development stage of the website. The build as it where. We are very collaborative with our teams at Wibble – with the web development and web design team’s working close through-out the concept stage. We have a rule of never showing anything to the client until it has been reviewed by the development team. This eliminates any issue that may come when the site is being built, it helps control the budget, and keeps the whole project in check.
Our skilled team at Wibble built the whole site from scratch. We used the WordPress block editor to whip up a custom web framework that lets our client easily create landing pages, content pages, and product info without needing any help from us. We had a ton of feature requests, plus some URL mapping and 301 redirects to handle, and we made sure to nail every detail so that organic search results stayed strong.
What we were left with was a fully-optimised WordPress site that truly reflected the Germinal brand.
In addition to the suite of Germinal websites. Wibble were asked to design and build another site for the same company called: NUEleg. This site was not about sales but more of an information portal for the science use on the Germinal products. It also featured backing from various partners in the same industry, highlighting the science behind what and why the make their products in the way they do.
Following the same process as the Germinal sites; and all the other sites that are designed and developed at Wibble – we created a site that was future proof, accessible and true to the company’s brand.
You can visit NUEleg here.
Whether it is working with larger clients or smaller clients, Wibble take the same approach to our design and development process. You are safe in knowledge that we will also strive to create your website in the vision you’ve been seeing all this time. Wibble has evolved significantly over the years. Our growing client base, expanding team, and ambitious goals reflect our commitment to excellence in web design on the island of Ireland. This success is a testament to our talented Web Designers, Developers, Support Agents, and Project Managers. The impressive roster of clients, including Germinal, showcases the high demand for Wibble-designed sites, affirming that we are indeed at the forefront of our industry.
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Don’t take our word for it—hear it straight from our clients! Their glowing testimonials speak volumes about the exceptional service, quality, and results we deliver. See why our clients continue to choose us time and time again.
Wibble worked closely with us to ensure we launched brand-new websites that pushed our brands forward and gave us the unique features we needed. We were looking for an NI WordPress agency and Wibble was the clear winner of our tender process. From design to development to launch to support, Wibble has been a brilliant partner and has continued delivering from day one. I can highly recommend Wibble.
While we continue to strive to be the best web design studio on the island of Ireland we’ve put together a few FAQs on what to expect from a Wibble WordPress website.
A Website that gets results! At Wibble, we build our websites with WordPress and Gutenberg blocks, allowing for a vast amount of customisation throughout your website. All our sites are built with accessibility at the forefront, achieving an AA to AAA rating within the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). We never build a “custom site” from prebuilt themes; everything is tailored to you!
You can be assured that when you are partnering with Wibble, your new site will be speedy, accessible, and designed and built with care by a team of web designers and web developers at the top of their game.
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