GWMWater: Joomla to Umbraco Website Redesign

Designing One Website for Many Different Audiences

GWMWater's website serves a very mixed audience. A rural customer checking on their supply, a conveyancer chasing property information, a job seeker looking at careers and a developer planning new works all arrive with different jobs to do, and none of them think in terms of GWMWater's internal structure.

So we started with research, not a sitemap. We ran a content audit, a competitor review and Hotjar surveys and behaviour analysis, then validated the navigation with stakeholder card sorting. That research shaped the information architecture, the page templates and the navigation, including an audience selector that points each visitor to the content that matters to them.

A Design System Built to Scale

Every page is built from one consistent set of designed components, so the site feels like GWMWater from the homepage to the deepest document page. It also means new pages can be put together quickly and stay on brand as the site grows, without going back to a designer each time.

The look builds on GWMWater's refreshed brand: deep navy, an amber brushstroke and real photography of the people it serves, with accessibility designed in from the start rather than checked at the end.

Water Data Front and Centre

For a water business, the numbers matter. The design system includes a water levels chart and a storage water levels section, so reservoir and storage information can be shown clearly and consistently wherever it is needed instead of as one-off pages. Reservoir listing and detail templates give each storage its own home.