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+61% performance score for leading R&D tax credit experts

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Refreshed website and ongoing improvements for ForrestBrown

Overview

ForrestBrown needed a new WordPress site and ongoing optimisation each month. As the UK’s leading specialist R&D tax credit consultancy, ForrestBrown wanted a high performing, flexible and secure site to demonstrate their expertise, generate leads and track conversions.

Screenshot of ForrestBrown's WordPress site

What the client wanted

  • High speed and high performance site to boost their SEO strategy, along with a focus on Core Web Vitals
  • Schema markup for FAQs to encourage position zero in Google search results
  • Complex goal and conversion tracking using Google Analytics, Tag Manager and GA4
  • Modular block-based components to provide flexibility for quickly building out pages without limitations from templates
  • Custom landing pages for campaigns using custom blocks

The story

Market-leading UK tax relief specialist, ForrestBrown, supports innovative British businesses to grow and create jobs. Atomic Smash has been collaborating with ForrestBrown to take its industry-leading website to the next level and create a suite of ready-to-go modules that increase site speed and efficiency.

Our work together started with improvements for ForrestBrown’s previous website, then progressed to delivering a full site rebuild after examining how effectively the site was performing for their target market.

Following the launch, we’ve continued investigating and suggesting areas for continual improvements and implementing these changes every month through our Always Evolving model. The site is now more responsive, easier to manage, achieves the best site speeds to date and has scope for evolution.

About ForrestBrown, the UK’s leading specialist R&D tax credit consultancy

Since it was founded in 2013, the experts at ForrestBrown have helped businesses create the equivalent of 10,000+ technical jobs in the UK. Their work is transformative and their success stories are nothing short of inspiring.

The goal for ForrestBrown’s website was to be the number one source of online information about R&D tax relief in the UK. First-time visitors can rely on the site to walk them through the steps for claiming R&D tax relief, while experienced claimants are given a quick route to their next claim.

The site is both a knowledge hub and a lead generation source, which showcases the team’s unmatched expertise and sector specialist support.

Screenshot of team page for case study on WordPress website build and ongoing optimisation for one of the UK’s largest R&D tax credit specialists ForrestBrown

Challenges: Online positioning and SEO optimisation

Adapting ForrestBrown’s online presence

ForrestBrown’s role within its sector is changing. In the early days, its focus was to educate the market and make business owners aware of how government incentives could help them. Now, ForrestBrown is taking the lead in defining the future of R&D tax relief.

In a fast-paced industry that calls for new information to be added to the ForrestBrown website quickly, efficiency was essential. With varying levels of expertise available online, it was important for the brand to secure its place, front and centre of a mature and competitive marketplace.

The new site is built with a suite of modules to enable us to roll out new page layouts in a more flexible way, allowing us to be more efficient and deploy new pages more quickly.

Anna Walton wearing a blue scarf and holding one hand in front of her mouth, the other hand holding a mug
Anna Walton Senior Marketing Operations Manager at ForrestBrown

Maintaining ForrestBrown’s SEO position

With a strong existing organic search presence, improving site speed and making sure everything is technically sound is an ongoing priority for ForrestBrown.

Building on its promising SEO position, there was room for improvement from a technical perspective, with special attention paid to an existing codebase that was “Frankensteined” together.

For us to maintain our search position we needed to make sure that everything was technically sound. The new website has improved our site speed, which in turn has helped our Google search rankings. Atomic Smash has been with us every step of the way.

Anna Walton, Senior Marketing Operations Manager, ForrestBrown
WooCommerce strategist, Piers tincknell, faces camera wearing red jacket and blue shirt

Websites that work harder

Get results by making your website work harder for your business. Talk to us about by optimising your digital platforms little and often: email piers@atomicsmash.co.uk

How we helped ForrestBrown maintain its position as the most trusted source of information in its sector

When we take on a new client, we prioritise their business needs. When that involves managing an existing codebase, we’ll proactively suggest areas for improvement and identify how our clients can maximise opportunities.

The UX & UI audit surpassed my expectations and created lightbulb moments. I enjoy being challenged and it did that for me (in a good way!)

ForrestBrown logo
Lauren Balasco Digital Marketing Manager, ForrestBrown

For ForrestBrown, we provided continuous delivery to create a site that could develop with their business, and through our close collaboration, Atomic Smash became a technical extension of the ForrestBrown team.

Later, when ForrestBrown decided to rebuild the website from the ground up, our already-established relationship gave us an advantage in identifying what the new site needed to achieve. We knew the consultancy’s goals, we’d learnt about the market and we understood the direction they were heading in.

The Atomic Smash team is responsive. They get us. And they’re just nice people!

Anna Walton, Senior Marketing Operations Manager, ForrestBrown

Since building and launching the new site, we continue to work together with ForrestBrown to deliver further improvements and optimisations for a site with strong foundations that are technically sound and relevant to the needs of its target audience.

This follows our Evolve to Solve ethos and demonstrates our Always Evolving model in action. We continuously seek out solutions, making sure the site is efficient, effective and aligned to business goals.

Atomic Smash knows our business so well and understands what we’re trying to achieve. They support us with our projects but are also proactive in suggesting areas for development where they think we could be capitalising on new opportunities. Having a close relationship where they know who we are and what we’re trying to do helps us. It’s an ongoing partnership.

Anna Walton, Senior Marketing Operations Manager, ForrestBrown
Screenshot for case study on WordPress website build and ongoing optimisation for one of the UK’s largest R&D tax credit specialists ForrestBrown

How ForrestBrown empowers UK businesses of all sizes to push boundaries is inspiring, and matching their experts’ enthusiasm for innovation comes naturally to us at Atomic Smash.

Visit ForrestBrown’s website

What we achieved

Average performance score increased 61% (26 points) after new site launch

Modular design with multiple colour themes and a flexible content editing toolset

Custom landing pages with visually appealing charts and interactive graphics

A/B testing using Google Optimize to measure the effectiveness of proposed changes before rolling them out

In numbers

£10m

barrier broken in the second year of working together

58%

reduction in bounce rate YOY

74%

average session duration improvement YOY

The last word

The new site was designed to be cleaner and faster to help secure our search performance. It has put us in a great position to get ahead of the latest algorithm updates from Google.

Anna Walton wearing a blue scarf and holding one hand in front of her mouth, the other hand holding a mug
Anna Walton Senior Marketing Operations Manager at ForrestBrown

Evolve to solve

Your website is never finished. Improve digital experiences with continual improvements and optimisation.