A new directory and content architecture for businesses in Cumbria to find support and grants to grow.
Project Overview
Cumbria Business Growth Hub delivers funding support to businesses across the county, directing them to sources of finance and administering regional and government grants.
As part of Cumbria Chamber of Commerce, we won a competitive pitch for the website in August 2024, launching the new site just before Christmas.
As the Growth Hub's range of business services had grown, the website became progressively larger. With that it became more cumbersome to manage and less user friendly to use, making it harder for business to access essential funding opportunities to support the Cumbrian economy.
The project required a new content architecture and the migration of existing news articles alongside a local business directory.
Our Approach
With any project, but specifically one of this magnitude, the planning phase is key to break down each stage. These stages included:
- Content architecture and site mapping
- Developing wireframes and prototypes using Figma
- Content migration and URL mapping for page redirects
- Development with Craft CMS to manage content in a structured, yet logical way
- Reissuing all registered users with a new login process to 'claim' their existing directory listing
Our thorough front-end process and regular project reviews ensured the project was delivered within budget and exceeded expectations.
By adding two distinct areas, ‘Grow Your Business’, and ‘Know Your Business’, and combining sophisticated search filters with dynamic content, the website offers everything visitors need while maintaining a high level of simplicity and a pleasing aesthetic.
The registration process for the business directory was also changed to prevent spam and limit applications to Cumbrian-based companies only.
A Seamless Migration to Craft CMS
Craft CMS, the platform used to build the website, was completely new to staff at Cumbria Business Growth Hub, but they weren’t deterred.
Craft CMS lends itself perfectly to the breadth of content Cumbria Business Growth Hub publishes and allows total control over the look and layout of each page. Whether the team need to include podcasts, embed social media posts or add links, they’re confident their work will always be displayed ‘on brand’.
Client Quote
With any new software we know everyone will need to get used to it—but Craft CMS is so easy to use. It took everyone on the team around half an hour to get to grips with it. It’s so simple, the transition wasn’t an issue at all.
The Results
When migrating large amounts of content to a new content management system, a dip in search engine rankings is a daunting risk.
To mitigate this we worked with a comprehensive list of pages from an earlier content audit to re-map any URL changes. As you'd expect, the site launched with the best possible technical foundations to support the site’s search engine visibility.
Performance was significantly improved with the site achieving an average of 86.4% on Google’s Page Speed insight metrics. All pages across mobile and desktop versions registered a clean pass against Google’s Core Web Vitals.
Where Cumbria Business Growth Hub would historically experience a drop in interest over the Christmas period, the number of visitors actually increased with the team receiving a wealth of positive feedback from regular users and other stakeholders.
Client Quote
A Digital are professional, thorough and efficient. Our ability to deliver the website was down to them. They are the experts and you can have confidence that they really know what they’re doing. Working with them has been a pleasure from start to finish. We are very happy with the finished result. I would recommend working with A Digital on your next website build.