Web design and development for Burghley House
Burghley
Taking Burghley Estate to the next level with Craft CMS
ABOUT
Built by Queen Elizabeth's Lord High Treasurer, William Cecil, Burghley House is one of the grandest houses in England.
Burghley Estate offers a magical and explorative experience. As one of the largest 16th-century houses with gardens full of surprises, art exhibitions and epic adventures for kids, discovering Burghley is a wonderful example of community and spirit.
Burghley Estate was looking for a digital partner to adopt their existing Craft CMS website, take them to the next level with design and user experience in line with their rebrand, and deliver a digital experience as beautiful as Burghley.
CRAFT ADOPTION AND STABALISATION
Initially, we worked alongside Burghley Estate’s incumbent to adopt the existing Craft 3 website. To ensure it was secure and working to its optimum, we migrated the site onto Craft 4, stabilising the environment and fixing bugs to create a strong foundation for the design and rearchitecture of the website’s navigation for a more intuitive user journey.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
A big design factor was ensuring a better user experience by making the website more user-friendly and accessible. We rearchitected the navigational structure, which makes for a more intuitive user journey and allows users to navigate content easily. As well as introducing more strategic call-to-actions for a user to take at various points in their website journey, leading to less frustration and more conversion.
WEB DESIGN
Burghley Estates wanted the website to feel like an immersive experience instead of static; it didn’t evoke or deliver the emotion visitors feel when they visit the estate. We worked to make the design more experiential, from the initial load of the brand asset using LottieFiles to subtle design elements such as ticket stubs and elegantly rounded corners.
Working alongside their brand designer, we progressed the brand for the digital space, which ascertains a more accessible website for all - in Burghley’s case, adjusting the colour palette and chosen font for easier legibility across devices. As the audience for Burghley is broad, font size and clarity were essential so all audiences were delivered an optimum experience, regardless of device and browser.
As the website is being redesigned in phases, we created a digital brand and UI kit to sweep over the templates, not in the initial design. This makes sure the website feels connected and consistent in aesthetics as we progress through templates to bring them up to the same level of design, experience and accessibility.
ANIMATION
To add to the experiential feel of the new homepage design, on the first load, we introduced a LottieFile, which allows us to create animations with very little page weight. This adds to the surprise and delight of a user's first experience with Burghley online.
DEVELOPMENT
After the initial stabilisation and update of the site, development encompassed making Burghley more intuitive in the backend, so relationships worked more effectively across content. On the website’s front end, we introduced the same level of polish as the design, with subtle animations, hover effects, and lazy load content for both the delight of the users and to keep the website quick.
The digital brand kit was also rolled out across all templates in preparation for further design and development. We’re preparing for phase two for Burghley Estate and are excited to work on our next project with the Burghley team and the Burghley Horse Trials.
“From our very first conversation with Abstrakt, it was clear the team understood exactly what we wanted to achieve and that they knew how to get us there.
Every stage from site adoption, architecture, web design and development has been expertly handled, delivered on time and to the highest standard. It’s great to be working with such a talented, pro-active and responsive team. Phase 2 is now underway, and we’re super excited to see how Abstrakt help us take our site to the next level.”
Jen Hattam - Head of Marketing, Burghley
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