Children's Books Ireland web design and development

Children’s Books Ireland (CBI) is the national arts organisation that champions every child’s right to develop a love of reading. They act as a core resource for the children’s book industry and those with an interest in books for children in Ireland including publishers, writers, artists, illustrators, educators, booksellers and readers. CBI partnered with Piquant to design and develop an engaging open-source website and resource platform. In 2022, the Children’s Books Ireland website was shortlisted for an IDI Award in the Best Website category.

Unique challenge

The challenge was to create a searchable archive resource with thousands of entries to act as a repository for children’s books and reviews in Ireland. We started the project with a series of workshops with the Children’s Book Ireland (CBI) team and industry experts. We identified organisational goals and service user personas. With the defined personas in mind, we developed a series of use-case scenarios to map the content to ideal website experiences. It was important that the archive was universally accessible and searchable from different search points.

Data focussed solution

We created an architecture map to define the required functionalities, technologies, design and content. The large volume of website entries and multiple audience types presented a challenge. We identified the need for a comprehensive internal listing directory and comprehensive search functionality.

We built the system using atomic design principles in an incremental way. In order to deliver a cohesive experience to the user, we designed modules and content types to encourage the standardisation of the uploaded content. An example of this are paragraph lengths, headers and image sizes and aspect ratios.

Because book covers and posters come in different sizes we decided not to crop the thumbnails, and instead used 5 grid columns on the desktop for better use of the space and experience when showcasing book covers.

We used Drupal 9 as the content management system. It was an excellent choice for CBI, the main advantages being open-source and scalability in terms of handling very large amounts of content, tweaks and add-ons. We configured Drupal in a way to smartly cache large aggregate lists.

Delivering accessibility

We incorporated our accessible front-end design and mark-up methodology to deliver a WCAG Level AA compliance standard for accessibility.

We developed a fully functioning e-commerce solution for selling publications with an integrated payment gateway for secure authentication payments. We also provided booking and donations integration for events and fundraising.

Archive resource

In order to find content from the over 2,500 entries (at launch) quickly and effortlessly, we developed a powerful Search API that allows users to explore and filter entries by Author, Publisher, Illustrator, Reviewer, Theme, Age Groupings and Keywords. The quality of the archive and powerful search functionality has established this website as the go-to archive for the children’s book industry in Ireland.