A website for a well-known UK logistics provider

We were delighted when one of our agency partners approached us to help them pitch to create a new website for one of the UK’s best known logistics companies. As with many of the projects we work on with PR and communications agencies, the end client is theirs and we won’t name them – but if we did, you’d know who they are and have seen their trucks on the road!

The brief

We were briefed to help pitch for and ultimately deliver an easy to administer, high performing website for one of the UK’s best known logistics companies by one of our agency partners.

Our solutions 

Pitch for the win

We were asked to help pitch for the project. So, we rolled up our sleeves and began a consultancy style piece in which we helped get under the skin of the brief. In conjunction with our agency partner we considered the business objectives of the website, the types of users involved, the functionality required, the competitive landscape, how information might be structured and the potential look and feel of the site. This was translated into a clear and concise pitch deck which we helped to present, ultimately winning the project for both us and the agency.

Planning for success

Next came a detailed planning phase in which we helped engage with key stakeholders from across the end client’s company. This helped ensure we’d identified objectives from across the business and planned the scope, structure and functionality accordingly. It resulted in a detailed and documented project plan, sitemap, content plan, timeline and budget that was communicated to all stakeholders.

Design

In order to give the end client a high level of flexibility whilst keeping the look and feel of the site consistent and on-brand, we planned to use Monogram’s flexible blocks system. This enables designers to design a series of Lego-like content blocks, each with a specific purpose (eg a video, image carousel or text block) that can be stacked on top of each other to create a page layout.

We described the technical parameters of this solution to the talented designers at our agency partner, who went on to create a series of great looking block designs and page layouts. These considered the types of information, structure and functionality previously identified as well as appearance and across desktop, mobile and tablet devices. The client was delighted by the work produced and we quickly progressed to the build phase of the project.

Website build and development

Now came the project element in which we were most heavily involved – the website build. We created a series of bespoke built flexible blocks that could be added, removed and edited on any page via an easy to use content management system (CMS). These followed the designs precisely, could accommodate rich media and were built with search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind.

With SEO as a key theme, we also included a number of tools to automatically review content against given keywords, reporting back to CMS users via a traffic light system. Detailed reports then made suggestions to content editors, recommending improvements such as alterations to page titles, seeding more keywords and ensuring descriptions were added to images. As always, we also ensured our code met industry standards so that content was easily crawled and consumed by search engines.

From our planning phase we knew that the target audience would be accessing the site from a wide variety of devices, so we built everything for compatibility with old and new browsers alike and tested extensively to make sure that the site looked great across desktop, mobile and tablet devices. 

We were expecting high traffic, so we tuned every aspect of the site for efficiency and performance. The aim here was to keep the user experience at its best even at peak times whilst making the most efficient use of the server resources available.

As with all the work we deliver, we wanted to make sure this site was as robust and secure as possible. To do this we follow industry best practices and in this case performed a series of automated and manual security checks.

Following development, the team at our agency partner provided extensive feedback after a round of thorough testing and content population. We stayed in close contact with them throughout this process, ensuring all comments were tracked, checked and addressed.

We then trained users at the end client so that they were confident in using the CMS to create and update all content including news articles, pages and navigation menus. Training included aspects of keeping the site content optimised for both accessibility and search engines.

Infrastructure

We worked with the end client’s infrastructure provider to create a robust, secure, high-performing cloud-based web infrastructure. This includes a number of deep software integrations that worked seamlessly with the CMS to deliver best in class performance and security.

To prove our work on both the site development and infrastructure integration segments of work we undertook load tests, in which we directed tens of thousands of automated robot users to the site to check its performance during peak times.

Support & maintenance

With the website live, the end client opted for our support and maintenance package. This means they can reach us for rapid technical assistance should they need it. We also perform regular security patches and performance updates to keep the site optimised and secure and monitor the site 24/7 via a suite of automated tools and notification systems.

Results

After a successful launch we had, in close collaboration with our agency partner, delivered:

• An easy to use, future-proof, modular build that gave the end-user communications team the confidence to create and manage their own content.

• A 24% increase in engagement from mobile users.

• A 50% performance benchmark increase against the original website.

• A 76% decrease in site page response times.

• A lift of 46,000 places in UK based search engine rankings and 357,000 places in global search engine rankings – within a month of launch.

• Outperformance of competitor websites by clear margins.

If that wasn’t enough, the website was also shortlisted for several industry awards, scooping a prize at one of them. A website for all involved to be proud of.

If you’d like to find out more about how we work with our agency partners to deliver best in class websites and digital solutions, please contact us.