Portfolio

We take web design seriously.

It's not just about designing an attractive site, the finished site must present the information your customers are looking for, and it must present it fast.

Since day #1, practically all of our clients have said "I want a site that's easy to navigate" and that's what we always strive to give you.

Your website must represent your business in a clear and concise manner. On the internet, you only have a couple of seconds to make your point and convince visitors to stay on your site.

These are some of the sites we have built for our clients.

National Rifle Association of New Zealand

Built on the Silverstripe CMS platform, this is a large and complex site involving bespoke forms, several blogs and a customised search mechanism that allows people to search blog posts using more than one tag at a time.

There is a password protected and fully editable Members Area and club secretaries can update their club members' info and order supplies from the site.

It is also possible to upload match results directly to the site from the field.

Our Customer Says...

We have been working with Vince from Rio Bravo Consulting for the past 4 years. As a sporting body we were looking a website that has different levels of information for our members but at the same time was easy for them to get around. Vince understood what we were wanting and we are very pleased with the end result.

We have found Vince great to work with on different projects overs the years’.

The monthly statistics are a valuable tool so we can monitor activities.

Helen Morgan NRANZ Secretary.

Pertronic Industries

Pertronic Industries is a well known and respected alarm manufacturer, with offices in New Zealand and Australia and customers around the world.

Theirs is a complex website containing a product catalogue, a simple online ordering system, and hundreds, if not thousands of downloadable files, some of which are only accessible to customers or technical staff. Starting from a design by another company, we built the website on SilverStripe and Bootstrap.

Our Customer Says...

"We have been working with Rio Bravo Consulting since 2017, when they built a new Silverstripe website for our New Zealand operation. CMS. Rio Bravo provide maintenance, development, and hosting services for all our websites, including our Australian website, which is also based on Silverstripe. They are highly competent and responsive, and we value their practical advice and support. Working with Rio Bravo is a pleasure we always look forward to."

O'Dwyer's Creek Vineyard

O'Dwyers Creek Vineyard is situated in the wine growing region of Rapaura, Marlborough. The vineyard grows the varieties MS Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay Clone 15. O'Dwyers Creek Vineyard had previously supplied grapes for Delegat's iconic "Oyster Bay" label, however, they are now producing a series of single estate wines that express the true nature of the "Golden Mile" in which they are situated.

The site we built for them allows visitors to buy cases of wine online.

Our Customer Says...

We were impressed with the value for money provided by Rio Bravo and the effectiveness of the Silverstripe CMS they used to get a professional looking website that ranks well in searches. Vince is always keen to help improve our site and a pleasure to work with.

Lifesource Yoga

Lifesource is a Yoga, Health and Wellbeing centre based in Upper Hutt, created as a place for healing, teaching and empowering people to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing.

We designed the site working backwards from a business card. And added a lot of useful features such as a newsletter, a contact form and an events calendar.

Our Customer Says...

I have been very happy with the outcome of the website design that Vince and Sonja from Rio Bravo Consulting created for me. They have been reasonably priced and reliable. Vince has been very attentive to the individual changes I have needed and followed up quickly. I am not so computer savee and I have appreciated Vince teaching me how I can make my own changes.

Steve Slicker Real Estate

Steve Slicker is a highly successful Upper Hutt real estate agent. He works with Tommy's Real Estate and has a terrific knowledge of the Upper Hutt property market, having sold a number of properties across the Hutt Valley, including Trentham, Silverstream, Wallaceville and Heretaunga.

We took over his website and did several things, chief among them changing his regular real estate column from a collection of PDFs to a blog ordered by tags and dates. We also created interesting, eye catching titles for each post and updated the contact information on the earlier columns to bring them up to date. Steve prefers us to look after the whole website so, when updates to the blog come to hand, we take photographs of attractive streets in Upper Hutt to use as featured images.

Our Customer Says...

Hi Vince, just a quick note to let you know how pleased I am with my new website, my hits have increased hugely and the weekly and monthly statistics you send through allow me to monitor much more closely my external activities, keep up the good work :) Steve Slicker

Mainstreet Legal

A prominent law firm in Upper Hutt, we were pleased to have had the opportunity to present them with a design that spoke about the type of work they did and the people that they worked with.

The need to be able to communicate the right message to the local community was an important factor in the brief, along with selecting the right imagery.

Our Customer Says...

We had never previously had a website and were sceptical as to its marketing value given that our clients were mostly local. Rio Bravo were able to give us a good steer on what benefits we could gain for our business with a website but more importantly they were able to create a website that fitted our budget and met our needs in that regard.

We were impressed with their knowledge of keyword software and of marketing strategies over the internet. Since the website has been up we have received a number of compliments about it.

We would certainly recommend them to other small businesses looking to establish a presence on the internet.

John Gwilliam, Principal and Director

Active Games and Amusements

This was a fun project. The site had been built, some years ago, on a local, proprietary platform and the company that ran the platform was closing down. We only had a brief window in which to recreate the site using a modern, open source CMS platform like Silverstripe.

The site allows people to make inquiries and order a wide range of party games and toys, from a small tricycle to full on bouncy castles.

 

The Barking Lot, Wellington

The Barking Lot is a centrally located, Wellington dog grooming salon. They also offer day care for dogs.

The site, built on Wordpress, interfaces with an Australian bookings platform and allows customers to register and book their dogs in for a wide range of pampering and beauty treatments. An eCommerce section is also planned.

New Zealand Tango Festival

Although we were not responsible for the rather pretty design of this website, we did a LOT of work "under the hood".

We ported the existing site to a Silverstripe CMS platform, allowing the owners to create and manage their own content without needing to know HTML.

We also implemented a lot of business logic relating to festival Pass purchases and the various discounts available under certain circumstances. We also created a Members Area where people who have already bought a Pass can alter their purchase, adding or deleting the workshops they choose to attend. We also built a simple registration counter system where people arriving for workshops and other events can be checked off against a list of registered attendees.

NZRT18

Based in Lower Hutt, New Zealand Rescue Team 18 is a volunteer group ready to help the community in case of natural disasters such as severe flooding or earthquakes. They train regularly in such essential skills as finding survivors under rubble.

The site we have designed and built them is simple, yet striking and original. We also created the banners at the top of the pages.

MJM Finance

MJM Finance is a small loan broker specialising in finding loans for cars, boat and bikes. The main part of the site are the various application forms which require a fair amount of customer-side validation. The nature of the loans business means that the site must be attractive, fast, robust, and allow people to upload scanned or photographed documents,

Wellington Kitchen and Bathroom Company

We redesigned the Wellington Kitchen and Bathroom Company's website, giving it an added touch of elegance. When you are thinking of hiring people to work on your house, the first thing you notice is the quality and attractiveness of their website.

Customer testimonials display on every page, as well as animations of kitchens and bathrooms they have built across Wellington. Lastly, we added a distinctive "accordion" menu on the home page.

BTS Tiling

This is a simple, yet effective "brochureware" site for a well known Wellington tiling company. The site is clean, elegant, offers few frills and loads very quickly.

There are sliders and image galleries to acquaint the visitor with BTS' recent projects and achievements.

The Order of the Boar

The Order of the Boar website modestly describes its activities as "Historical Cavalry Re-enactment in New Zealand". However, they do a lot more, including organising one of Upper Hutt's most colourful and popular events, the jousting at Harcourt Park, and event that brings large crowds and international competitors to Upper Hutt.

The site was originally built on Dot Nuke and we ported it into SilverStripe, added some key features and made the site's layout "responsive" and able to display correctly on all manner of devices.

Upper Hutt Community Patrol

Building a website pro-bono site for Upper Hutt Community Patrol was a lot of fun, involving going for "ride-alongs" with the patrollers to photograph what they did. I also heard great stories about community involvement.

On a technical side, the site has a password protected members' area that allows patrollers to download documents and other relevant information.

Mitchell Davies Chartered Accountants

MDCA is an accounting practice based in Lower Hutt but servicing clients across New Zealand. Their clients come in a range of sizes: large corporates, small businesses and one-man band contractors. We built their website after submitting several variations on a simple sheet of letterhead paper.

It is a clean, simple site that is all about what the best accountants can provide: clarity.

Smart ID Products

Smart ID Products offer their customers a range of items for their organisation’s identity needs. These include Lanyards, Retractable Keys and Card Holders, Luggage Loops, and a range of similar products.

We built them a site with a simple shopping cart and were responsible for cataloging their items in a database and all the product photography.

All Active Fitness Training

Looking for a convenient way to get in shape? Need expert help but don’t like gyms? Then you're probably looking for All Active. We built a site that allows clients to find a trainer by clicking on a map of New Zealand. Clients can upload food diaries for their trainers to study, and download personal exercise programs. 

Undergroundsound

Undergroundsound is a post production sound facility in downtown Wellington, and a major change of pace for us.  We produced a site that is subdued while remaining strong in terms of design, rounded off by embedded YouTube content and an elegant, Flash-driven navigation system which recalls the faders so typical of recoding equipment.

Our Customer Says...

Rio Bravo created the website I wanted and more. I think the key thing is their listening skills, to hear and understand what I wanted made the job of getting my site up and running not only fast but fun.
Phil Burton, Director, Undergroundsound Ltd

Cooper Legal

Being one of NZ's most important legal firms in the field of historic abuse, they are also a small and friendly team.  Our design incorporated the tree, being an important part of their office environment. A tree's roots go deep into the soil (a symbol for community and the past) and it provides shelter and, in many cultures it is also a traditional meeting place.

We provided a web presence that was clean, crisp and informative for their clients and any potential clients.