Where we build

As part of the website redevelopment project, we built a custom tool, which allows users to search for an Australian postcode or suburb on a map and see whether Metricon’s building services are available in that region.

When we first began working with Metricon, the existing Metricon site included a map feature that displayed the different build regions Metricon operated in throughout Australia. The existing feature was not fit-for-purpose from a content authorship perspective, and was impeded by complicated backend processes that made it difficult for Metricon staff to update and maintain. Improving the usability (both for end users and content authoras) was therefore a key requirement of the website redevelopment project.

We undertook a proof of concept activity during the design phase of the website redevelopment project to investigate and test possible technical solutions for the Where We Build map.

Our first task was to determine how data was being generated for the existing Where We Build map, and whether it could be integrated in a more effective way. We built a command line program that would marry Metricon’s internal data (stored in a CSV file) with an open-source government dataset of Australian suburbs and merge the resulting region shapes into a single view that represented Metricon’s build regions.

To get the smallest filesizes possible for the data, we saved it as topojson (5 times smaller compressed than geojson), and then converted that into geojson in the browser for the map. The map element uses Mapbox, for consistency and efficiency with other map elements across the site.

The resulting Where We Build tool presents a clean, clear map view of all of Metricon’s build regions. The search function is easy to use and follows familiar design patterns for postcode lookup, providing users with a simple way of checking whether Metricon builds in their desired area.

After the new Metricon website went live, we then built an internal version of the Where We Build tool for use by the Metricon Sales and Marketing teams, which provided additional information about the sales region associated with each suburb.