Today we revealed a beta version of the new Hume Brophy website. For us, this is a lot more than the culmination of heavy lift by a lot of people: it is a stake in the ground that demonstrates our growing digital capabilities as an agency.
Last summer, we embarked on a strategic review of our own digital footprint. Pretty much the whole team got involved through workshops, performance analysis, comparative research, content production, and alpha testing. We also did a deep dive on our online reputation as an agency to better understand how we showed up (or not) in google search results.
Through this process we concluded that, to be truly class leading, we needed to focus on three things:
- devising a website user experience (UX) that more closely addresses the needs of users, something we’ve largely achieved by creating landing pages for each of our key offices and sectors, and improving our SEO
- implementing an end-to-end process for the planning, production, and publishing of content across our digital and social media channels
- developing and delivering over 100 hours of mandatory social media training across the entire business
Once our strategy was agreed, we appointed Owen McNamee as Head of Marketing and his junior, Emily Quinn – both highly capable people carving out entirely new roles. If you took a snapshot of our digital presence before and after their arrival, the transformation we’ve taken would be immediately obvious. And it is a trajectory we will continue.
Creating client websites isn’t new to us nor is the planning and production of social content, all of which we do in our day to day client work. But actually pointing the lens of analysis at ourselves, and building a new strategy based on the insights gained from doing so, has been an exciting and impactful process.
Over the coming weeks and months, you’ll see many iterative improvements to the website as we introduce new functionality, commission bespoke photography, add absolutely every colleague to the people page, and adapt based on what usage data tells us.
We’re also keen to hear your feedback – drop me a line if you have any suggestions or comments.
A massive thanks to the entire team at Hume Brophy, and our trusted partners, without which we wouldn’t be where we are at today.