Seventy years of coastal development, made easy to navigate
01 — The brief
One company, a lot of places
Hoppers came to us wanting a fresh feel for an existing website. The focus was modernisation and a better experience for the people using it.
The difficulty is the size of what Hoppers do. Residential communities on the Coromandel, in Northland and in Auckland, four retirement villages under Hopper Living, and a run of commercial and marine projects, past, present and future. Each destination has its own audience, and several have their own websites.
The site had to introduce a seventy-year-old family business, then get someone to the one place they actually came to look at, without a wall of menu items.
A portfolio you can filter Every project sits in one index, filterable by past, present and future, so a buyer, a council planner and a commercial tenant each reach the right thing from the same page.
By the numbers
A portfolio worth showing properly
Feature
The answer was an advanced side navigation and menu system. The menu carries the full portfolio without taking over the page, and a scroll indicator tracks position within long, image-led pages so nobody loses their place halfway down a development.
- Side navigation available from every page
- Section markers that track scroll position
- Filterable project index, past, present and future
- Enquiry form and direct sales contacts on every destination
02 — The process
How we got there
- 01
Mapping the portfolio
Every development, village and project was listed and grouped before a single screen was designed, including the ones that live on their own domains.
- 02
Designing the navigation
The side navigation and menu system came first, because it is the thing that had to carry the size of the business. Everything else was designed around it.
- 03
A photography-led design system
Full-bleed imagery, generous type and a restrained palette taken from the Hoppers brand, so the land does the selling and the interface stays quiet.
- 04
Build and content migration
Built on Oncord with the history timeline, project index, news and enquiry flows all client-editable, and existing content carried across.
- 05
SEO and launch
Search work through the rebuild so the new structure kept its rankings, then handover to the Hoppers team to publish news and projects themselves.
Seventy years, told as a timeline The family story runs from a 1920 arrival in Auckland through Pauanui in 1967 and the canal developments of the 1990s, presented as a scrolling timeline rather than an about page nobody reads.
03 — The outcome
A developer that reads like one
A sleek, contemporary site where the scale of the business is an asset rather than a navigation problem.
Every destination has a place to live, the seventy-year history is front and centre instead of buried, and the Hoppers team publish news, projects and village updates themselves.
The same structure has since carried new work for the group, including Hobbs Bay Estate, Mariners Quarters and Hopper Living.
We are thrilled with the outcome of our website. The Fuel Design team were exceptional in understanding our desires and requirements, transforming our vision into a visually striking, seamless, and responsive design that aligns perfectly with our brand's commitment to quality. Striving for a contemporary blend of aesthetics and functionality, together we aimed to create a website that provides users a pleasing experience. Fuel's attention to detail and open communication ensured a smooth and efficient project execution. Hoppers recommend Fuel Design to anyone looking for a website that not only performs exceptionally but also captivates visually.Tawny Floyd, Hopper Developments
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