The Royal Mail website is now a part of a portal merging the three companies that are under the postal system banner. Prior to this the Royal Mail website stood out alone with all its own unique sections and over a million visitors a month.
With an existing site needing a drastic visual overhaul considering what people needed from their first click was already known through a history of data collected. The home page needed to be visually appealing and easy to navigate. Areas that were known to have a high number of visitors were added to the home page so regular visitors could go there immediately.
The Royal Mail website continually got additions and updates. Keeping up with what was there and how to get to it required an intelligent site map. Broken down into categories, a listing for each primary section was seperated into its own group. Rules on how to add new sections made updating the site map automatic. A clever but simple text file system allowed for adding sections to all levels of navigation with a single line of code.
Delving deeper into the Royal Mail website would find you seeing a consistent look throughout. Yet each section had the ability to have its own distinct look without confusing the user and still keeping to a standard navigation principle.
