Control-F
Training digital forensic examiners to fight crime and make the world a safer place.
The consumer electronics industry generates a lot of the data that needs to be captured and analysed by digital forensics examiners. New devices, operating system versions and mobile apps mean the functionality of devices is continually evolving. Police authorities need to be effective against fighting digital crime and so they need the most up-to-date techniques of extracting data.
Time for a change
Control-F is a Bedfordshire-based company that specialises in teaching digital forensics techniques to private and public sector organisations in the UK and overseas. When the company was started in 2007 a basic website was created and over time had become out-of-date, cluttered and complex for staff to update. Adding to this problem was a recent brand refresh so across the website there was a mixture of different design styles. All of this made the business appear unprofessional when in reality their courses are some of the best in the industry.
Re-addressing the balance
Putting the design part of the project aside for now, the most complex part of the Control-F project was the necessity to include a customer-facing schedule of all courses enabling potential customers to check dates, availability and book on to. This then needed to be supported by a staff-facing system, that was easy to maintain, and could be updated quickly. As an extra layer of complexity to consider in the build, Control-F offers three levels of courses and each is represented by a different colour. This gives both customers and staff and quick reference colour code to make things easier. As this colour code would be used throughout the site there needed to be an easy way to define how each course was categorised and then displayed.
The solution
To enable this client to self-serve is was clear that the Control-F site needed to be built using a Content Management System. The site was implemented using WordPress, styled using their new brand material with the customer’s typeface rendered through Adobe and Google Font systems to reduce site rendering times. The staff-facing system was designed so that courses could be easily updated in realtime with the added functionality of defining course levels with one tick box.
The outcome
The Control-F brand has been applied across the whole site so the final responsive layout and design works well on all devices. Time has been spent on the user experience too, mapping each page and post to ensure potential customers can find the courses they need with a minimal amount of clicks as possible. The staff-facing system has been implemented also so that the site can now be quickly and easily updated reducing administration time and the potential for out-of-date course details. Finally, each page has been designed to be as small in size as possible which results in page loading speeds of half a second. See for yourself www.controlf.net