Loughborough Building Society

Services: Focus groups, User experience, Website design, Website build, Copywriting, Direct mail, Email marketing

Situation

The Loughborough Building Society was looking for its website re-build to be in line with a recent re-brand but also to allow far more access and flexibility over amending the copy on the site.  The Loughborough is a mutual building society which is very much focused on providing a personable and friendly service, something which it was looking to emphasise on its new website.

 

Task

bcsAgency was tasked with planning, designing and building a new website - but also to oversee the production and management of offline campaigns, such as direct mail.

 

Action

Prior to any work beginning on the project we undertook a detailed internal stakeholder review at the Loughborough.  This was run as a focus group with key members of all departments.  As well as the focus on the business objectives, we also took time to tease out of the staff what they felt their customers would want from the site.  The outcome of the focus group was for us to produce a series of audience personas, a touch point for all stages of the project to ensure that any work also paid heed to the customers needs and expectations.

 

bcsAgency then undertook a detailed planning and user experience exercise - comprising the production of sitemaps and wireframes to ensure each page was carefully planned an thoroughly documented.  This flowed into the graphic design of the site where we worked closely with The Loughborough's branding agency.

 

The build of the site was undertaken in an open source PHP content management system (CMS) - bcsAgency felt that this would offer the greatest flexibility for The Loughborough and it also meant there were no licence fees for the CMS software.  As always with any CMS build we provided staff with full training on how to use the system.  In addition bcsAgency copywriter's also sprang into action to develop appropriate content for key areas of the site, again ensuring that the tone and language was friendly and accessible to existing and potential customers.

 

Result

Since launch the site has been well-received both by customers and by The Loughborough staff.  In particular the flexibility of the content management system has enabled the business to be much more agile with its online content and allowed them to run focused direct mail campaigns backed up by landing pages on the website.

 

bcsAgency are continuing to work with The Loughborough to evolve their website and look forward to a planning meeting in summer 2011 to plan for the next phase of the site.