ITS Technology Group were looking for a website redesign to reflect the changing needs of their business. Having previously offered ultra-fast internet services directly to residential and business customers, they are now prioritising partnerships with companies that will resell ITS infrastructure to end-users. With this in mind, there was a requirement for an audit of existing content, with repositioning of content that met the needs of this new business approach and the removal of content that was no longer relevant. It was also important to take a close look at the technical aspects of the site design, with site speed core to the new build. Finally, there was a requirement to improve conversion rates for enquiries across the site, with a particular focus on partner enquiries and, as a fast-growing company, job applications.
The primary purpose of this job was to restructure the website to reflect changes in the business. This included changing the target audience from broad (including residential and business customers) to a more targeted approach. The new audience was to exclusively focus on fibre broadband resellers. I began by auditing all existing content on the site in order to bring relevant posts and pages across to the new site. New content was then provided by the client, which I used to develop a sitemap around which to build the site. Styling across the site was dictated by the existing brand bible, although minor tweaks were required to ensure readable and web-safe fonts were used. The use of ITS logos and motifs was widespread across the site to match the print marketing that is used across the company.
The number one goal of the site was to generate new leads for the business in the form of ‘Partner Enquiries’. With this in mind, the main homepage CTA above the fold was used to guide site visitors to the ‘Become a partner’ page. The rest of the homepage was used to highlight key features of the business, including their ever-expanding networks and the key products available to their partners. Throughout the site, there was also a continued CTA presence used to bring potential customers back to the ‘Become a Partner’ page. Further down the home page, and on dedicated pages elsewhere on the site, Case Studies and News and sections were built to showcase the latest work that ITS were doing, with custom posts built and the front end designed to align with the rest of the branding.
The other key area of the site was to be recruitment. As a result, a section of the site was built to highlight the working culture within ITS and to act as a vacancy listing area for any new jobs. At the time of launch, there was limited content provided for job vacancies, but as these became available, I built a custom post type for job vacancies. This presents an easy to complete set of fields for each job vacancy, making it easy for jobs to be added to the site. These then produce consistent vacancy listings on the front end for potential employees.
Once the design was approved, I ensured that a comprehensive redirect map was created. This meant that the change in URLs that came with the restructuring had minimal effect on traffic and search engine rankings. It also meant that traffic destined for old content was redirected to the most relevant pageon the updated site. I also worked to streamline the performance of the site, with site speed being such a key ranking factor with Google. The site was then transferred from the development server to the live server, which was managed by ITS. As part of my maintenance agreement with the company, I ensure that the site is kept up to date. This minimises any security risks and allows the site to continue running as intended.
Once the new ITS Technology group website was launched, we were able to see an immediate improvement in site speed. The first full month post-launch saw the average page-load time on the site drop by over 85% from 8.45 to 1.19 seconds. This provided a marked increase in the number of pages visited by users as well as the time spent on the site. It also saw a drop in bounce rate from 58% to 46%. These visitor engagement statistics continued to improve in the following months.
We also saw a dramatic increase in partner inquiries, the key focus of this new site. Within two months of launch, the number of enquiries had exceeded those received in a full year on the previous site.
From a traffic point of view, we did see a fall in visitor numbers. With the change in the target audience to a more niche market segment, however, this was to be expected. Analysis of site data suggested that, while vistor numbers were down, the actual visitors were far more relevant to the site than previously. UK traffic now accounts for 90% of visitors, while only 66% of visitors were from the UK before (ITS exclusively trade in the UK). Traffic was also improving in key areas such as the partner enquiries page and the recruitment pages, fulfilling the goals set out in the brief.
