Firefly & Communications – Multilingual Website Build
Helping to launch a new proposition for a PR & Communications Brand.
The Brief:
Firefly was founded in 1988 by Group CEO Claire Walker, and since then the company has gone on to help some of the biggest names in tech. Today the Firefly team has become known as ‘Reputation Shapers’ where they use their years of experience to help develop a brand or CEO’s reputation. During their time Firefly has supported many established brands such as Vimeo, Motorola and Dell.
With the Firefly team looking to push forward their new brand proposition, we were contacted to discuss how our team could support their new business objectives by creating an amazing new website!
Thankfully the team at Firefly had a very clear brief and content plan which they wished to take forward into the new build. Being a multilingual business (English, French & German) there was an awful lot of content to feature on the new website, but as they say “Where there is a will, there is a way!”.
Coming into the briefing stages a few requirements were made very clear to us:
- The new website must be fast (the old website was not)
- There must be a focus on a clean & clear website allowing for easy access to the range of content available
- Throughout there should be a selection of subtle ‘delighters’ (branded animations for example)
- The back-end of the website must be easy to use and allow for a range of user types
(The use of must highlights the key acceptance criteria of the brief)
As part of the brief, it was also our focus to improve the SEO capabilities of the website. During the briefing, we found that each language was held on its own domain and hosting package. Of course, this isn’t an immediate problem however by having each language on a different domain the ‘SEO value’ is split into thirds. Due to this it was our recommendation to consolidate all three (DE, EN & FR) into a single domain, thereby giving maximum value in terms of SEO but also saving time & money with hosting fees!
With the ground set and one of trusty Trello boards (our project management tool which is shared between team Creative Blend & the client) packed full of tasks & deadlines, we were ready to begin!
The Creative Blend team did a great job building our new website. They’re a bunch of genuinely nice people, always understanding and happy to take the time to talk things through if you have questions – and did a fab job on our new site!
The Approach:
As mentioned above, our starting place was to arrange a meeting with the Firefly team to ‘download’ as much information as we possibly could from their lovely team. During the meeting, we discussed: aspirations, business objectives, team structure, content structure, and the business direction (By taking this first step with all of our clients it helps our team to really understand what matters most to your customers!).
Moving swiftly into the design stages of the project our team first took time to read and understand the base proposition of ‘Reputation Shapers’, by taking such an action it allows our designers the opportunity to create user desires and review how they relate to each piece of content.
Once digested, we moved into the wireframe stages creating new layouts for desktops, tablets, and mobile devices – working with the toughest breakpoints (smallest mobile devices commonly used). This is all part of our due diligence to ensure the design ideas flowing into the build would be built with rigour!
Whilst the wireframe stage was underway, Liam (our SEO expert) began working with the Firefly team to review where the user demand was in their market – answering questions such as “What do my clients search for?”, “Do certain services get higher demand at different times of the year?”, “Are our clients searching for our services but using different terms?”. With our Keyword Analysis report, the Firefly team had all of this information at their disposal, this allowed them to make adjustments to their copy and provide the correct content for their customers!
Moving into the next stages we worked closely with the Firefly team to review the wireframe designs, making iterations and improvements before coming into the full digital visuals. It is during this stage where we begin to add colour, delighters, imagery, and greater detail to every pixel of the page.
Once again working through the visuals we began to iterate the designs, working with the wider team before moving into development where Joe (developer) was waiting. It was at this stage we set up the backend of the website (working on a WordPress CMS), and Joe began to flow in the new design styles, whilst bringing to life any elements of user delight (delighters).
With some great feedback from the Firefly team, we made quick improvements and before you know it we were coming into the final stages of the project. Where we began to transfer all of the lovely content, placing each section in its corresponding language area.
This led us to optimise pages for SEO benefits (title tags, meta-data and alt tags) whilst ensuring to upload the latest sitemap into Google Console to allow the website to begin ranking as quickly as possible.
Some highlights from the project:
- WordPress build working with some custom features to pull in new feeds and allow for ease of use
- Website training provided to administrators
- Ability to add in new content separated in the back end by language
- Language recognition built in to send users to the correct website language
- Tested for accessibility prior to launch
- Technical SEO best practices included
- Integrated video throughout
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