Critical Software

Critical Software SA has been ranked at #4 in the Business Week Top 500 Fastest Growing Companies list for the last two years, and specialises in providing a range of software services for business and mission critical components of systems used in the Defence, Aerospace, Telecommunications, Finance, Government, Industrial and Transportation markets.

The brief called for two different websites sharing a common theme, one for Critical's UK subsidiary, and one for the parent company in Portugal.

The fact that Critical are growing so quickly and are rapidly launching new products and services into new markate sectors meant that a content managed site that matched the sophisticated design ethos of the company was essential.  The UK company focuses on a smaller range of products and markets, and consequently has a simpler design and implementation based on the same base design of its parent.

The site was built using the Joomla CMS, with the addition of an image slide show component to show an array of products in the lower left column of the front page and a simple newsletter manager.

We can't claim any credit for the initial design layout, as this was prepared by Critical's own graphic designers: this set the overall theme and the three column layout that is unusual for a corporate website. However the original design was a little simplistic, calling for three simple graphic panels across the centre, and this proved impractical given the growing range of market sectors into which the company was growing.

Our solution was the substitution of a simple rollover array for the smaller UK site, and for the Portuguese site the creation of a central Flash graphic panel, complete with carousel style navigation. The result is an unusual clean sophisticated design.

As with most of our web design projects, the project also called for SEO of both sites.

www.criticalsoftware.com | www.critical-software.co.uk