Greenpower

Web development / Content migration

GreenPower

Overview

GreenPower is the only government managed renewable energy accreditation program in Australia operated by the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment. GreenPower promotes the benefits and the use of 100% renewable sources of energy by connecting businesses and households with accredited electricity providers.

When Australians use the Greenpower website they can be rest assured their money goes towards funding renewable energy projects and jobs.

Morpht worked with our long-standing design consultancy partner Folk in the implementation of the designs and redevelopment of the site on Drupal 8.

Illustration of an indirect route from A to B

The challenge

GreenPower took the opportunity, while re-imagining the design of the site, to rework and improve the usability of some key features including: 

  • the listing and migration of more than 400 green energy providers
  • introducing a renewable energy offset calculator for corporate events
  • implementing a search for an energy generator near you
  • promoting a showcase of the businesses using 50% or more renewable energy
Illustration of planned route from A to B

The solution

Morpht jump started the build of the new GreenPower site by installing Convivial, the starter site for Drupal. Convivial is a Drupal distribution created by Morpht which provides out-of-the-box a strong code base that delivers accessibility, responsiveness, and powerful tools for Site Editors.

Convivial saves on numerous development hours and provides instant functionality and flexibility that our clients love and rely on.

Improving the information architecture

Morpht worked with GreenPower to define a set of content types to bring structure and improvements to the information architecture for the website.  The content types included:

  • General content pages
  • Case studies
  • News & Events
  • Businesses
  • Providers
     

Locate a generator

With an ever-growing number of renewable energy generators coming online, you’d need a tool to help you find one near you. We built a solution using React.JS and Google Maps API to manage the listing and pin point generators on a map. 

GreenPower-Generator-map

 

 

Super-charged searches

The Business Directory is a ‘glory board’ showcasing businesses around Australia with 50% or more of their energy consumption coming from renewable sources. Morpht super-charged this directory with a search and multiple filters to help customers easily find businesses they know and trust faster.  View the business directory

And, to help businesses and consumers convert to renewable sources of energy, we created an advanced search functionality to surface over 400 providers and highlight their products. 

Business directory and Provider search

 

 

Highly responsive energy offset calculator 

We built a highly responsive calculator to help educate businesses and encourage them to offset their energy consumption at their corporate events.

By utilising ReactJS and JSON API, we created a calculator that delivers immediate responses as you enter data about an event. This was especially important for a multi-step calculation process so you can revise your information on the fly.

We also empowered GreenPower Site Editors with an editable matrix where they can modify complex calculation parameters when needed to keep the calculator up to date without relying on developer help.

GreenPower offset calculator

 

 

Illustration of a mountain with flag on top

The outcome

 

Implementing a Web Content Management (WCM) system meant we delivered to the client a sophisticated platform that can deliver content to many web assets including the website, the calculator app, and the different directories. This follows modern development principals that identify content management as going beyond a website and becoming a decoupled system that caters to an organisation’s many online communication points.

Working to an 'agile' methodology provided flexibility with the project and its progress. This meant that when those unexpected 'curve balls' presented themselves during the project development phase, Morpht had the flexibility to respond and adapt as required - ensuring that we identified changes early, workshopped solutions with the client and delivered a project that could respond to a fluid environment.

The result is a highly interactive beautiful site that GreenPower are proud of.

Visit GreenPower

 

Keeping things Convivial

Utilising Convivial ensured we could provide immediate cost benefits for GreenPower, while not compromising on features and functionality. Convivial equips site editors with extended capabilities to display content and tell meaningful stories way beyond a traditional Drupal deployment. For Morpht, Convivial supports our agenda to ensure we keep projects on time and within budget.

GreenPower homepage shown on a Macbook screen

Content first approach

Following a 'content first' approach allowed Morpht to quickly identify the need for multiple content types. Each content type holds a specific purpose on the website whether it is communicating general information, a case study, business information in a Directory listing or displaying a generator of green power on a map.

GreenPower webpage shown on a mobile screen

The Drupal advantage

Drupal's advantage as a CMS is its ability to easily integrate with third party APIs such as Google maps. On this project, Morpht capitalised on the strength of Drupal's extendability, Convivial's content display and Google's mapping technology to deliver a map displaying all green power generators throughout Australia.