Successfully creating a new website

By Samantha Davies

Keeping up to date with website technology and design is key in today’s competitive marketplace. A website can be the first time a potential client comes into contact with your brand, it acts as a key communication channel and can be an effective way of generating new business.

Haines Watts had undertaken a website redesign and build in 2011 and at this point had modernised design, cut down the content and simplified the navigation on their website. Haines Watts also designed a separate mobile site in 2011 and were the first UK top 20 firm of accountants to have a fully enabled mobile site.

However, as with all technology, you can’t simply stand still. Nowadays, with responsive designed websites being favoured by Google in mobile search results, there was a need to once again review the site as a whole.

The new Haines Watts website project began around 6 months before the intended go live date of the new site and this amount of time was definitely needed to complete a project and website of this size and complexity.

Haines Watts’ reasons for undertaking the project were:

Targeted

The site needed to be more focused on their target audience of business owners. It was intended to lead with business owner stories on the new site by showcasing Haines Watts’ clients talking about their challenges and how Haines Watts have helped overcome them.

Responsive

The new site needed to be a fully responsive design, to view on mobile and tablet as well as laptops and desktops. This also would enable Haines Watts to discard their separate mobile website and would improve their Google rankings for mobile.

Up to date platform

Because of the complexities of the Haines Watts website, the previous site was built within WordPress (industry standard software) and a bespoke content management system (CMS). Using a bespoke CMS tied Haines Watts to the company that had built the CMS for ongoing work.

WordPress has now evolved and developed and is capable of handling complex websites and is used by many developers – so it was important that the new website was wholly built in WordPress to allow more flexibility and freedom in future.

Modern design

Haines Watts as an accountancy firm have continued to develop and evolve over the years and it was important that the website design reflected the modern and forward thinking accountancy firm that Haines Watts is today.

 

Choosing the right suppliers

Haines Watts has worked with two companies for digital and online marketing for a number of years. The decision was taken to continue working with both companies on this project – one to design the site and one to build and maintain the site ongoing.

Using two suppliers may seem, to many people, to complicate the project, but it was felt that using both companies for their strongest skill sets would give the best outcome. It allowed each company to be used to sense check decisions made by the other and support the Haines Watts team throughout the project. This worked well and both companies worked excellently together.

Making the project a success

There are some key points to consider in order to make your website project a success:

1. Use a specialist digital designer, who understands how digital design works and how this differs from hard copy designs. This is imperative. Haines Watts had previously used general agencies to design for digital and found they didn’t have the in depth knowledge of websites that was truly required. Web designers go into more depth than just the frontline designs, they consider things like how navigation should work, how things should overlay and how transitions work. These are skills that a general designer can often lack.
2. Have a clear project plan. At the start of any website project a lot of work goes on in the background and there is very little to see at the front end. For a marketing person, it can feel like little progress is being made. Suppliers should provide a clear plan of when key stages will be delivered, and these need to be regularly checked against to ensure the project is running on time.
3. Communicate regularly. At the beginning of the build phase Haines Watts had fortnightly conference calls with both suppliers to check progress against the plan and to ensure any questions that arose during the build phase were being addressed. All of the team had access to the staging site, so could see progress in real time. Nearer the end of the build, weekly conference calls or meetings were necessary as the website build progressed, testing commenced and content was put in place.
4. Expect the unexpected. If your website is complex, expect some things to occur that you may not have considered and allow time for them. Just changing the format of the Haines Watts site from single columns to two column format, meant time consuming work took place to check through all text to get column breaks in the right places. Moving to landscape pictures only on blogs and news etc., also meant changes to pictures in historical blogs and news articles had to be made. Both of these things were not considered when the original design was approved.
5. Allow plenty of time for testing. With the complexity of multiple browsers to test in, such as Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari and the addition of having to test designs on desktop, tablet and mobile – the testing phase can take a huge amount of time. Allow additional time to ensure you test thoroughly before launching a site externally. The last thing you want when you launch a new website is to have visitors finding broken links, unformatted pages or out of date content.

Although a new website can be a costly, complex and time consuming project, it’s a vitally important one as a website may be the first point of call for potential clients and forms the hub of all other digital communication, whether it’s apps, social media or e-mail marketing. However, if you manage the project carefully the outcome will be worth the cost, time and effort.

The Haines Watts website has only been live for a short period of time, so it’s important to spend time over the coming months looking at key analytics and tweaking the design based on how people are using the new site to improve it. There’s no time to stand still!

 

Checklist box – 5 tips to make your website project a success:

• Use a specialist digital designer
• Have a clear project plan
• Communicate regularly throughout the project
• Expect the unexpected
• Set aside plenty of time for testing

 

Haines Watts

Auditing & Accountancy, Tax, Advisory, Corporate Finance, Fiduciary & Estate Planning

Abingdon and 60 further offices throughout the UK

Samantha Davies

E: sdavies@hwca.com

W: www.hwca.com