If you’re thinking you might need a new website read on and see how we went about doing our own website! After a busy period of planning, designing, developing, and testing we are very pleased to announce the launch of our new website and branding. In this blog post, we will take you on a journey of our new Umbraco website and our plans for the future.
If you have seen our old site, you’ll know exactly why this re-design/ re-brand was necessary. During the discovery phase, we outlined our vision and goals. As a company that designs and builds websites, we wanted to make our website a working member of our sales and marketing team. We envisioned it being the flagship project that current and prospective clients would look at to see the kind of amazing work that we do, whilst also showcasing our skillset and depth of knowledge. Our aim was, to make the website faster, easier to navigate and more user-friendly.
As part of the discovery phase, we conducted research into our websites analytics to see which pages were the most successful and how visitors were using our website. Using this data, we could see which parts of the website were doing well and where we needed to improve. We also considered our target audience, who would be viewing our website and what they would be searching for. Finally, we drew up a list of the key features we wanted to include on our new site, by looking online at brands we loved to get inspiration.
After laying out our vision and end goals, we started the design and development phase of the project. Weekly design meetings were held to discuss the new branding and layout of the website. We also carefully considered the Information Architecture and services navigation, restructuring them to provided users with an easier way to learn about ClerksWell’s services and to browse the information they want, enhancing the overall user experience. We used persona testing to review our new IA and UX. Umbraco’s accelerator Umbraco Uno which includes a wide range of functional and good-look widgets made the development stage extremely quick and simple. During the development stage, we considered accessibility, SEO and redirects from the old site.
Our website contains many new features, such as a slider banner on the homepage to help visitors stay up to date with what’s currently happening at ClerksWell from webinars, events, and new launches. We have also designed a custom services navigation bar to make it easy for users to see all the services we offer and the technologies we work with. Furthermore, we have included an ‘Our People’ page to show the friendly faces behind ClerksWell offering a more personal feel. The new site also contains integrated social media buttons for Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn to foster improved communication with our clients and other visitors.
The launch of our new brand and website is the result of a lot of hard work, designing, developing, and testing. However, it is equally the beginning of a new and equally exciting phase where we will be continuously building on our brand and website, adding content, developing new features, and improving existing ones. We will be constantly updating our content with helpful information, cutting edge thought leadership, company announcements and client successes in the Blog and News and Insights feeds. There are also many new features still to come such as staff bios on our ‘Our People’ page. So, keep your eyes peeled!
So, are your planning on building a new website from scratch, updating your existing site, or considering changing platforms? As Umbraco and Sitecore partners we are here to help, taking you all the way through from the discovery to optimisations past go-live phase. If you are embarking on a similar journey don’t fail to get in contact with one of our experts today.
If you want to learn more about building your own website, check out our previous blog posts; ‘What makes a good website?’ and ‘Key signs you need a new website.’
A history of the ClerksWell website:
ClerksWell website 2016
ClerksWell website 2019
ClerksWell website 2020
