In 2017 we were successful in winning a tender to develop a new website for Tandridge District Council, a local authority in Surrey supporting a population of just under 90,000 residents.

This was a major coup for Purple demonstrating that we could comfortably deliver large scale web solutions.

Over the years the relationship between Purple and Tandridge has continued with us providing technical support and generally ensuring that the web platform remains resilient, stable and up to date.

In early 2024, Tandridge engaged the Smarter Digital Services team, who had been involved with the original build, to carry out an extensive review of the website and digital services.

The resultant report confirmed that the original website had pretty much stood the test of time but would benefit from a few design improvements and other changes to bring the site up to date and align it with the .gov framework.

The Process

Updated design mockups were developed for both a revised home page layout as well as a new inner page design to introduce a useful sidebar menu function.

With plans in place, and a team from both Tandridge and Purple on standby, we took a fresh snapshot of the full website and implemented a ‘no change’ policy for a 1 week period in August.

As no actual content or data was being changed, implementing the design and layout styling required the page skin - the template that controls the styling and layout of the page content - to be manually swapped for all of the 300+ pages.

At the same time, this was a great opportunity to spring-clean the web content and so both teams checked and cleaned all of the pages throughout the website adding new and updated call-to-action buttons.

The new home page design changes were applied with final tweaks and adjustments made before the Tandridge team took over for final testing.

In parallel with this, we completed Accessibility checks and prepared to swap the updated site to become the new live site.

All of this work was completed in 5 days and the Go Live swap was so seamless that no one noticed or experienced any downtime at all.

All of this goes to show that planning and teamwork is key:

• We all knew what we had to do
• We all knew the timescale we were working to
• We had all prepared and practised prior to starting the work
• We used a group Teams Chat so we could communicate in real-time
• There was a plan and it worked

Giuseppina Valenza (Head of Policy and Communications) said:

“I just wanted to formally thank you, George and Allan for all your hard work on the website. My team worked so well with you all and although there was a lot to do, they also enjoyed it.

You and your team are always so responsive and never complain about our constant tweaks (well not to us!). The website looks great and the fact we have had no negative feedback is a great sign.

We really like working with you - you are all brilliant.”

You can view the new website here.