Find My Local Business Directory
Find my Local is a local business directory based on the Central Coast of NSW. It was started in 2009 - with the aim of helping consumers find the right business and for local businesses to be found.
The Challenge
We were approached with a brief to develop a large business directory to service the Central Coast and surrounding areas. The brief had clear goals for the site including the ability for members to create and manage their own online listings, full eCommerce integration, complex search algorithms to rank businesses based on the users input, image manipulation and a full featured management console.
This project also called for a high level of documentation with hundreds of pages of written content and wireframes making up the final set of documents.
The Result
After the lengthy documentation stage and having everything planned out in a Requirements Analysis and Functional Specification we were able to start the design stage. As the site is quite large and relies heavily on human interaction we had to ensure that all aspects were well though out and that everything would work together while still being modular.
Throughout the development phases it was exciting for the team to see the project grow from ideas set out in the documentation stage come alive as code was created and the design was laid over the top.
Whenever we ran upon a stumbling block or something that didn't work how we though it would from the documentation stage we would liaise with the client and the development team to discuss the options and find a solution.
After months of development and testing the initial beta was launched to a closed test group and registrations started to flow in and refinements were made. Now that the site is live we can see how all the hard work and planning put into this project has cumulated into a wonderful end product.
