Case Studies

Salix River & Wetlands strong growth

Project Background

Salix River and Wetlands are unique within the UK construction industry in that they are a designer, contractor, manufacturer, distributor and grower, all rolled into one single company. Therefore, their clients are provided with a full solution that's cost effective, environmentally sustainable and from one main source. The company was founded on the principals of using sustainable sources by providing vegetative solutions for improving water quality, civil engineering and soil erosion, as well as ecological and landscape enhancements.

Salix are proud to be founder members of the 'European Soil & Water Engineering Group', an organisation of committed experts that promote cooperation in Europe on erosion control and bioengineering techniques.

Taking a leap - the vision

Whilst Salix existing website had stood the test of time, it had evolved to meet the changing needs of their sales, technical and customer information function for a growing range of products. Salix had grown to exceed a £2 M turnover business and a new website that could cater for the larger infrastructure and marketing scope was required. From an initial brief the following outcomes were agreed:

- a managed website
- designed and optimised to Wc3 standards
- search engine friendly design
- website should be simple to navigate
- quick to find services, with relevant products and easy contact points
- add value to the Salix brand
- utilise the extensive library of projects and photographs
- be customer driven whether for landscape, riverbank or construction industry

Project Process

After our free consultation, HML provided Salix with a project plan which incorporated the brief, the schedule of work and quote with agreed staged payments. Upon agreement of the project budget, timescales and our manageable staged payments, a project manager was allocated. The project manager ensured close liaison between Salix, our designer and developer at each stage. This helps to ensure effective and prompt communication, identifying any challenges early, resolving changes to the brief and thus ensuring budget and timescale over-runs are minimised.

How long is a piece of string?

With this website project, it was a refreshing change; we had oodles of word docs and web pages of projects together with colourful photographs, illustrating the before and after of the project work they do. The visually appealing nature of this work really did help convey to new customers how they might transform their landscape or save a riverbank from erosion. However, careful control, painstaking sorting of suitable text, correlating with the correct photographs and featuring relevant products used, together with correct contact points at Salix was the key. Hugh, David and Richard, the team from Salix provided the content and worked tirelessly to get it right. And it really does show that their attention to detail ensures customers can navigate quickly and find all the relevant information when they arrive.

The brief did changed along they way, we did however manage to keep the project on track and adapt to these new requirements, ensuring the budget was controlled and time schedules adapted to suit. And it was a large project with over 100 web pages at the last count.

What did Salix say?

'This was a complex project, with content coming from multiple sources and many opinions to consider so it wasn't surprising that timescales stretched, although I'm pleased the budget didn't get out of control as the project did grow from the initial brief.

HML provided a comprehensive service that was fully bespoke & worked around our specific requirements - well done!'

David Holland
Managing Director    

Full Salix feedback from our Customer Satisfaction Survey. Click here (PDF).

 
Visit the Salix website.

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