A Modern Company Looking For A Modern Solution
ACCU Inc is a Colorado-based property management company that prides themselves on their excellent service and ability to innovate.
Managing thousands of residents isn’t easy and over the past few years, their website had been sidelined in favor of other projects. It was built during a time when websites were not responsive and SEO was not a consideration because of this they reached out to Pilera for a solution.
Choosing A Website Platform
There were many considerations when building their website. Based on our discussions there were a few key features that they could not do without.
- Ability to update their own content
- Improve their SEO
- Provide a responsive website
WordPress was the obvious choice as it is an established platform with many built-in themes and plugins that could meet any of their needs.
A Management Company That Cares
Starting as a small family business only a few decades ago it was that close, intimate nature that helped sky-rocket the company to the size it is today. It was important to continue that heritage in the websites re-design.
We decided to focus on family-oriented imagery. Children with their parents, a community together, and Colorado backdrops to reinforce the core beliefs of the company. This was a company that could manage your properties and
Design & Branding
Colors
A decision was made early on to maintain the dark cyan color palette provided by Accu from their previous site. They had used the color for many years and had become as much their company anything else. To contrast the value of the cyan we used a heavy amount of whites and mid-toned greys.
A new addition to the branded colors was warmer oranges and reds. This decision reinforced the Colorado-based company as being firmly established in its regional market. Orange provides a You can find these colors mostly in the images chosen to be displayed on the site but there are a few key locations where fonts use it.
Fonts
Merriweather is a serif font used as headers and drop caps. When combined with the san serif font for the primary content on the site it creates a contemporary and distinct look, elevating it above your regular management company. The first letter of each paragraph is further distinguished by using the companies branded color.
Open sans has become a mainstay in the font community as a worthy competitor to Helvetica when needed and a dominant rival to harsher fonts like Arial. It was a clear winner to provide a modern clean look that is easily legible for the content of the site.
My Role & The Team
I played a substantial role in the development and design of this site. The site was designed and built while working in-house for Pilera Software. The tasks below are not an all-inclusive list of my involvement in the project but contain a majority of the most important jobs I performed.
- Enhanced their original branding while maintaining key visuals that distinguish them from their competitors. Maintaining the original dark teal color while including new fonts and color choices throughout.
- Found and modified the images on the site, making sure that they adhered to the strict family-oriented and modern vision we all had for the company.
- Created a majority of the written content on each page.
- Found the stock videos and edited them for the homepages hero image.
- Customized the CSS and styling to extend the capabilities of the original theme. Including the first letter of the first paragraph of each section having a colored drop cap.
- Worked to improve SEO through valuable keywords, maintaining or properly forwarding links to older pages, adding tracking, and working directly with the companies SEO company.
The Conclusion
From start to finish the website was up and running in just a few weeks. With detailed interviews and an understanding of the industry, we were able to put together a website that exceeded the client’s expectations. It helped reinforce the companies brand of a family-oriented and technologically innovative property management company from Colorado.
They have continued to use the website for a few years now and other than some small changes and help, it has stayed relatively the same.
