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Straker»Products»Shado CMS»Portfolio» Beachcroft Wansbroughs

Beachcroft Wansbroughs

Commercial Law firm Beachcroft Wansbroughs (Beachcroft) have developed a reputation for providing clients with pragmatic commercial legal advice. With more than 1,250 lawyers and support staff in 8 offices across the UK, they are a firm that strives to make it easier for clients to face business challenges, by helping them to anticipate change and delivering cost effective solutions.

At a Glance

URL - www.bwlaw.co.uk

Business Challenges
Create web presence that positions brand as an industry leader. Enable staff with no HTML training to update site themselves.

Solution
Shado CMS Content Management System.

Business Benefits
Greater marketing impact. Increased information on the site due to ease of use. Increased efficiency.

Challenge

One of the firm's key communication channels is its website www.bwlaw.co.uk. Originally developed as a holding site, it was not meeting the company's growing needs, nor did it provide a suitable platform for future development. "What we had was really just an online brochure," explained Jo Janes, document management executive at Beachcroft. "We recognized that some other law firms' websites were ahead of the game and we knew we had to do something about it."

Beachcroft needed a new website that would reflect their market position as top commercial law firm in addition to enabling staff untrained in HTML to update the site themselves.

In summary the project objectives were to:

- represent Beachcroft in an original way as a balanced, commercial and responsive law firm
- communicate the human face of the firm and to speak in an open, clear tone that de-mystifies legal language
- create a site that partners and staff are proud of and felt happy to reference
- enable staff with no HTML training to update the site themselves on a regular basis

"A steering group was set-up consisting of partners, fee owners and web-literate staff within the firm" said Janes. "They went through a process of discussing and evaluating what they thought clients and prospects should get out of the new site in terms of how it should look, the navigation and so on. It was really about drawing clients and prospects into the site so they could then make personal contact with one of our partners. Design-wise, we wanted it to look modern and in line with what else was out there in our industry."

Content management was a crucial part of the new project. "We looked at possibility of creating and managing web content ourselves rather than having it done for us" said Janes. "We're a large firm with a lot of different service areas so it made sense for us to manage our own content on the new site. Shado CMS from Straker Interactive was recommended as the solution."

Solution

Shado CMS Content Management System.

Results

Beachcroft now has a site that can be managed and updated with ease via Shado’s interface by staff with no knowledge of HTML. The site is specifically customer driven through a simple "Your Interests" area, enabling users to find information quickly. Other special features include a custom written area on the homepage creating a scrolling News section, an intuitive client driven "Your Interests" wizard, Events and Newsletters areas, as well as an extensive partner portfolio database.