Comox Valley RV



> Client Agent & Advisor
> Requirements Gathering/writing
> Information Architecture
> SEO Copywriting
> Graphic Arts Production


Objective

The design and development of Comox Valley RV's (CVRV) first website was contracted to a third party firm some 3000 kms away. I was tasked with dealing with the third party vendor to ensure top level design, content and functional objectives were met and delivered on time, on budget (as the expression goes).

Overview

CVRV is one of many sites I have worked on over the last 15 years. This is the first website where I used the ReCITE Model where I acted as a proxy for the end user and the client represented the interests of the business. As this client was very particular and wanted detailed documentation, it was a great opportunity to get agreements on design priorities. After some survey-like questions, here were the agreed objectives taken from the ReCITE Model in order of priority: Inform, Excite, Connect, and Transact.

The key objective was to ensure visitors get quality information on a RV product (Inform Modality). CVRV had a huge selection of unique products for the area. The second objective was to present an exciting new alternative retail experience in the local RV community (Excite Modality). Competitors were tired places to visit. The third objective was to make it easy for visitors to connect with sales, finance and service departments (Connect Modality). The final objective was the least important since the client wanted to encourage people to come into the dealership and therefore transactional elements were very limited on the website (Transact Modality). However, we did discuss a new section in the future for displaying RV rentals and transact RV rental bookings.

Beyond acting as client agent, I wrote all of the SEO friendly copy which I assembled into an extensive content inventory. This inventory would be used to influence the structure and classification of components (i.e. information architecture, taxonomy) and act as a style guide (e.g. nomenclature). In addition, I advised on keywords as part of SEO, creative and content strategy, layout and did graphic arts production.