Case studies
CIPHER Medical, a Hartlepool business delivering training, equipment, logistics support and governance services to the medical profession, was swamped in autumn 2020: driver support for hospitals under Covid volumes, a new training facility opening, and a website that could carry neither the online services nor the enquiries arriving. I audited the digital estate, wrote the brief, ran a three-agency selection and project-managed the build. The new site shipped in under 8 weeks and within the agreed quote, and overall goal conversion moved from 0.3% to more than 3.5%.
CIPHER was busy in every direction at once. It was providing driver support for hospitals struggling with Covid volumes, opening a new training facility, and handling rising volumes of web-based services and product orders.
Underneath that, the website was the constraint. There were no real online services, the enquiry and sales conversion rates were poor, and there was no method for handling the workload the business was taking on.
The brief I was given was to review the website functions against best practice, improve the sales and enquiry funnels with an emphasis on efficiency, and work out how to link the website to the internal office systems.
I audited the existing digital provision and went through needs, resources and objectives with the CEO, then set a project structure and delegated the specialist parts.
The audit covered UX and UI, goal handling, content and optimisation. It found the booking interface and CRM failing, domain hosting problems, missed updates and maintenance that had left pages irretrievable, security issues in old WordPress templates, ecommerce failures, and no content planning.
That produced the brief for a new site: more functionality for delivering training, ecomms functions, translation and internationalisation for product sales, and better CMS functions including course bookings. A separate review of traffic generators produced a plan for new content, optimisation and social interactivity.
Then the procurement and the build. I wrote the brief and the navigational wireframes, helped CIPHER get three quotes from suitable agencies, and produced the comparison analysis for them to choose from. I project-managed the delivery, which covered content migration, 301 management, design, CRM specification and the compliance issues, then the optimisation and the social activity plans.
Overall goal conversion moved from 0.3% to more than 3.5%, and the new site was delivered in under 8 weeks within the agreed budget and quote.
| Metric | Before | After | Period | |---|---|---|---| | Overall goal conversion | 0.3% | over 3.5% | through 2021 | | Web traffic | not recorded | +130% month on month | through 2021 | | Social traffic | not recorded | fourfold | through 2021 | | Social conversion | not recorded | over 3% | through 2021 |
Organic traffic grew every month of 2021 with goal conversion above 3%, and social goal interactions produced worthwhile leads for the first time. Leads escalated, and so did the database of training enquirers.
When a business is swamped, the instinct is to fix the loudest thing. The useful move is the opposite: audit first, settle the brief, and only then go to market, because a defined brief is what lets three agencies quote against the same thing and lets you choose on comparison rather than on who sounded most confident. The 8 weeks came from the work done before the eight weeks started.
The review that started this is a digital health analysis. On what an audit actually changes for a client, see improving your website with a digital audit.
Under 8 weeks, within the agreed budget and the agency's quote. The speed came from the brief being settled before anyone was asked to price the work, so the agencies were quoting against the same defined thing rather than guessing.
So the choice could be made on a comparison rather than a hunch. I produced the analysis of the three proposals and CIPHER made the selection, then I project-managed the delivery, because the team had neither the technical project experience nor the time to run it themselves.
The booking interface and CRM were failing, there were domain hosting problems, missed maintenance had left pages that could not be retrieved, the old WordPress templates carried security issues, and the ecommerce did not work. The audit found all of it before any rebuild was specified.
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