Web Development: Countrywide

Screenshot of Countrywide Careers website.

The Objective

Build the front-end for the new responsive Countrywide Careers website.

The Solution

For this project I worked as part of a small agile team alongside Countrywide’s full-time developers. Having previously built a similar site with the team (albeit with less complexity), we were able to reuse a great deal of boilerplate to get up and running nice and quickly. Although the site wasn’t built with a component library per se, we used the component-based metaphor to provide each piece of functionality required in isolation. This allowed for QA to begin testing as soon as the first ‘component’ had been developed and led to a very efficient developer feedback loop.

There were particular challenges along the way to overcome, as we were handed the static comps without a complete UX vision. Issues arose around how to make the job search and filter sections as user-friendly as possible, and what happened to certain display states in edge cases such as a tablet user rotating their device, forcing the layout from ‘tablet’ to ‘desktop’ view. We also had the quirks of working with a third-party providing search result data via a reverse proxy, so communication was paramount to ensure that their data integrated seamlessly with the rest of the website. Ultimately, we found solutions to each of the issues, and client was very happy with the end result.

Job Roles

Web Developer
Graphic Designer
Image Editor
User Interaction Designer

Website Features

Built with Umbraco
Mobile-friendly (responsive design)
Retina-ready (high resolution) graphics
Easy to update
Clear content hierarchy

What They Say

Thank you for all the work you have done these last two years, you have been exceptional. We would never have been to deliver as much as we did to such a high standard without you and you will always be welcome back here.