Case study · Blackheath CID

An ageing website, rebuilt as a civic platform.

Blackheath City Improvement District had a site built in an earlier era. It still worked, but it no longer reflected the organisation behind it, and members could not do the things they came to do.

Project snapshot
ClientBlackheath CID NPC
SectorCity improvement district
LocationBlackheath, Cape Town
ScopeRedesign, IA and SEO
The client

Who is Blackheath CID?

A non-profit city improvement district in Blackheath, Cape Town, funded by and answerable to the property owners and businesses in its footprint. A CID lives on trust and responsiveness: residents report faults, members read notices, and stakeholders need documents. The website is where nearly all of that starts.

The challenge

What was wrong with the old site?

Nothing dramatic, which is what made it easy to leave alone. It simply aged past what the organisation needed: harder to navigate, harder to act on, and reading as older than the work the CID actually does.

An ageing first impression
The design and footer dated back well over a decade, so the site read as older than the organisation behind it.
A homepage without priority
Current notices and archive posts from years ago shared one long feed, so nothing looked more urgent than anything else.
Dense navigation
A large nested menu and a heavy sidebar made the important actions harder to find than they needed to be.
Key actions buried
Reporting a fault and joining as a member, the two things people most need, were not front and centre.
Limited search visibility
Without structured data or modern metadata, the site was harder for search engines to surface.
Built for desktop
The layout reflected desktop-era habits, in a market that now reads notices on a phone.
Before and after

What actually changed?

The rebuilt Blackheath CID websiteThe old Blackheath CID website before the rebuildBeforeAfter

Drag the handle, or use the arrow keys. Left is the old site, right is the rebuild.

The approach

What did the rebuild change?

The content barely changed. What changed was the order it appears in, and how quickly someone can act on it.

A search-led hero
Documents, notices and forms are what members come for, so finding them sits at the top rather than three levels down.
Report an issue in one tap
The single action the district most needs residents to take, moved out of a submenu and onto every screen.
A structured resource hub
Documents organised and dated, instead of scattered through a feed in the order they happened to be posted.
Built mobile-first
Rebuilt around how people actually read a notice: standing up, on a phone, in a hurry.
The result

What does success look like here?

Not a conversion rate. A city improvement district is not trying to sell anyone anything. It is trying to look like an organisation that is on top of its work, and to let a member do the thing they came to do without hunting for it. Putting a percentage next to this would look better on our website and tell you nothing true about the project.

Free audit

What would the “before” say about your site?

Send us your web address. A person reviews the site and the SEO underneath it, then sends back a written audit with a reply in one business day. It is yours to keep either way.