July 27, 2018

Burges Salmon

New Sitecore Website Build For Burges Salmon

How Kagool built Burges Salmon’s corporate website in Sitecore and helped it develop a fresh digital strategy.

The Challenge

Burges Salmon had a very innovative brief, aiming to go further than a standalone website and create an entire digital strategy.

The professional services industry isn’t known for being the most digitally savvy, so it was refreshing for us to work with Burges Salmon towards offering its clients a unique experience with Sitecore.

The KPIs for this project were:

  • Increase in ‘Contact a lawyer’ enquiries
  • Increase in job applications
  • Increase in subscriptions to email newsletters
  • Increase in usage of website on mobile devices.

Burges Salmon’s marketing team needed a modern, user-friendly CMS that would help it to publish more relevant content, quickly. More importantly, the firm needed an online presence tailored to the needs of its target audience. Their previous website was based on Percussion Rhythmyx 6.7 CMS. The firm chose a platform that would give it more control, flexibility and integrated digital marketing tools.

Sitecore ticked a lot of the firm’s boxes. Moving to the platform would allow Burges Salmon to streamline marketing processes and target visitors more effectively. They knew that using more detailed analytics tools, integrated with its website, would help it to better understand site visitors and identify business development opportunities.

Stakeholder management was a big consideration for the project. At Kagool we knew we’d have to ensure the senior board was happy in each sign-off phase. Managing input and getting agreed sign-off from 30+ senior stakeholders would be no easy task.

The Strategy

We worked closely with stakeholders across key areas of the business to form a pre-build project team. We were pleased to find that Burges Salmon’s in-house project team included experienced digital marketers who understood our user-centric approach. Using our tried and tested pre-build process, Discovery, we covered business goals, KPIs, target audiences and user journeys.

Working closely with Burges Salmon’s project team, we identified and analysed over 15 unique personas within 4 persona groups. We then defined and prioritised more than 200 persona tasks, which would drive the content strategy and the UI. From this, we were able to create an approach and backlog for the build.

We that found users’ primary needs were profile based. All other tasks needed to support this end point. Therefore, when designing the site, the highest priority tasks were given the prime real estate.

Developing these personas also helped Burges Salmon to plan more focused personalisation and engagement activities. We were able to use the Sitecore platform to deliver not only a website for multiple persona groups, but a system that would provide insight, generate and qualify leads.

Because of Burges Salmon’s newer browser support, we could use lots of interesting solutions that aren’t possible with older browser support. Flexbox, for example, is a module that helped us to develop complex layouts in CSS and predict how page elements would react to various screen sizes. Overall, we had a very modular approach in terms of design implementation.

Before the site launched, existing content was repurposed and rewritten for the new personas. Plus, content gaps were identified and filled by new content. Professional services content needs to be both authoritative and accessible. So, our content team worked alongside Burges Salmon’s content editors to draft and refine a wide range of content for the new website. All content was optimised for SEO, based on researched keywords that targeted Burges Salmon’s audience and personas.

Summary and next steps

In the short space of time post-go-live, the Burges Salmon website has seen impressive results.

Burges Salmon’s new Sitecore solution makes it easy for its marketing team to produce, edit, test and measure the success of future content. It has the tools to deliver an ongoing content strategy, on web, mobile and social channels, that engages and converts its target audience.

The improved UX and content focus of the new site has also made it much easier for users to make direct contact with the right Burges Salmon Lawyer or employee. And, due to clear and focused content, they’re relatively more informed when they do make contact. This shows a direct improvement to the customer experience, which has led to a significant increase in quality leads.

Results

We’re proud of how our approach to the project paid off, when looking at the site’s stats across all devices. Using Yslow to test the site, it achieved ‘A’ status. The results included:

  • 50 per cent increase in sessions
  • 11 per cent decrease in bounce rate
  • 39 per cent increase in session duration
  • 79 per cent increase in goal conversions.

Quotes

“Kagool’s combination of Sitecore expertise, technical strength and shared cultural values, made them the clear choice as our partner for this project.  We don’t just want a visually appealing website; we want a platform that’s going to meet our future business needs and support our ongoing digital strategy. We could tell quite quickly that Kagool understood our vision and there was potential for a really positive working relationship.” Simon Russell, Commercial Director at Burges Salmon

“The real standout feeling for us has been Kagool’s understanding of Sitecore. They’d sold us on their expertise from the beginning, but they really proved it and exceeded our expectations. They were able to help Burges Salmon get more from the platform than before, delivering an implementation built with our short and long-term goals in mind. They thought of things we didn’t and helped to future-proof our investment.

As and when issues arose, Kagool were quick to respond. They worked very well with our project team and delivered excellent Sitecore training. We’re already seeing increased visitor traffic and engagement, as well as the benefits of analytics and personalisation. When Brexit hit, for example, we were able to create and publish content quickly. We’re tuning our content to our users’ needs and making use of the built-in tools we couldn’t use before.

The new website has given Burges Salmon a platform which is an integral part of communicating our strategy and engaging with our clients. Kagool have helped us to take control of our digital strategy.” Simon Russell, Commercial Director at Burges Salmon

“We knew this would be a demanding project from the outset, but we quickly formed a strong relationship with Kagool who understood our vision and the pressures involved. We wanted to create a more focused, streamlined digital experience for our clients and we were impressed with Kagool’s commitment to user-centric design. They have a well-deserved reputation as Sitecore experts and what they delivered has helped us to push our digital presence to the next level.” Andy Alderson, Digital Marketing Manager at Burges Salmon

About Burges Salmon

Burges Salmon is an award-winning, independent law firm with offices in Bristol and London. The firm offers a broad range of high quality legal services to a national and international client base, which ranges from FTSE listed companies, government departments and public bodies, to executives and high net worth individuals.

With a reputation for technical excellence and commercially sound advice, the firm’s partners focus on building strong, collaborative relationships with clients.The firm has built a market leading reputation in sectors such as transport, energy, infrastructure and private wealth. Its partners demonstrate a wide range of expertise across practice areas. Its sector based approach to business development is strategically important to the firm.

For more information visit Kagool’s website.