thePlatform came to Blue Flavor with a common strategic design problem. They were looking for a partner to help them refresh their existing web site to a clean, customer-focused site that better reflected their company and services.
We sat down with Marty Roberts, thePlatform’s Director of Marketing, to talk about the project. Marty explains their needs: “thePlatform needed a refresh to our corporate web site to correspond with some updates to the way we were describing the company and our services. We were looking for a partner to design and build a clean, functional site that spoke to our customers.
In addition, we wanted to build the site using a lightweight content management system to enable easy updates by our marketing team. Finally, the site needed to be optimized for natural search and include integration with a web site analytics tool.”
thePlatform approached us with a fairly aggressive timeline (about six weeks over the holiday) and some big goals for what might on the surface look like a simple redesign project. We took the time to dig deep into the project from the get go.
The Right Team, The Proper Solutions
Taking a look at their problems and their team, we spent a bit of time helping them sort out what they really needed to address and presenting some possible solutions before we sent a formal proposal.
We needed to offer some guidance on content management and SEO, for example, to make sure everyone involved had a better idea of what needed doing. Based on what we knew about them we recommended a highly customized Movable Type installation which worked out great in the end. Marty explains, “For content management, Blue Flavor recommended Movable Type. Their experience in managing sites with this tool is much larger than our own and they provided a solid reference for this decision.”
The decision to recommend Movable Type to manage their content might not seem logical at first blush. A “blogging” tool to manage a corporate site? Well, we see MT as a bit more than a blogging tool in the right hands and while it’s not perfect (nothing less than a custom CMS solution ever is), it can be a good fit and has lots of upsides. It’s inexpensive, fairly easy to set up and learn and was something we felt thePlatform could work with. So far, so good.
As well, we took the time to demystify the whole SEO question. In our opinion the biggest component for SEO is good content. If you provide good content, people will link to it and it’ll be found in searches. Sure there is more to it than that, but it’s not rocket science. We told them we could help with SEO without adding too much complexity to the project; in fact, much of our SEO expertise is baked into our process.
“Their attitude toward search engine optimization was also refreshing as we could meet our objectives without an ongoing SEO contract.” Exactly!
Finally, the decision to work with us came down to talent, philosophy and process. As Marty explains, “Blue Flavor presented the most straight-forward approach to accomplishing our goals. During our evaluation of partners, Blue Flavor’s design aesthetic aligned well with our vision. Most importantly, we knew we would be a priority for their entire organization and we felt that we could easily work with their team to meet an aggressive timeline.”
Amazing Results
As with any project, this one wasn’t all smooth sailing. However, considering the timeline and the fact that a large and important part of the project fell right over the holiday break, it went, in Marty’s words, “amazingly well with an information architecture and design agreed to within a few weeks. Development of the site progressed quickly as we finalized our copy and content for each page. A couple of training sessions on Moveable Type had us producing our own pages and the site launched on time.”
“The team at Blue Flavor managed a difficult task, meeting a tight schedule while accommodating some changes to the scope of our project. Every question we asked, even the simple ones, was addressed promptly and professionally, without any hint that our inquiry was beneath them.”
They’re already seeing the return on their investment.
“The results included rave reviews by our customers, employees and partners. Of greater value, we are exceeding our business objectives with a 300% increase in the number of sales leads generated by the site. We are very happy in our decision to work with Blue Flavor.”
We enjoyed working with you too, Marty!
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