GreenPower
Morpht jump started the build of the new GreenPower site by installing Convivial, the starter site for Drupal, which saves numerous development hours and provides instant functionality. Morpht then developed several features for the new site including migrating more than 400 green energy providers to create a ‘locate a generator near you’ map, a highly responsive calculator that delivers immediate responses as you enter data and a super-charged business directory search showcasing businesses and highlighting their products.
Web development / Content migration
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. Australians can 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.