Digital strategy, restructure and remodel of Urban Creation’s digital landscape
Overview
Urban Creation is Bristol’s leading accommodation provider, providing luxury serviced apartments and student housing.
The Urban Creation team came to us seeking ongoing support with their WordPress websites through our Always Evolving® service. They wanted to improve clarity, so web visitors would immediately understand the Urban Creation brand, offering, and the services they deliver for their customer groups.
This called for a restructure and a major tidy up across their digital estate. We rebuilt the main Urban Creation website and remodelled two existing websites to better represent their two sub-brands, which involved changing the original Urban Creation website into the Urban Student website.
What the client wanted
- Support for existing WordPress websites
- Clear and efficient user journeys
- Improved hosting solutions
- New site structures and digital architecture
- Improved site performance
- Communicate their premium offerings clearly
The story
We took on Urban Creation’s existing websites to enhance them over time. This involved server solutions during onboarding, then later re-structuring and re-launching their digital architecture for clear messaging and efficient user journeys.
Atomic Smash played a pivotal role in transforming our digital presence at Urban Creation.
Challenges
Onboarding an existing site with sub-optimal hosting solution
When onboarding Urban Creation’s websites, we encountered various issues and shortfalls with the existing hosting solution they had in place. This made using our tried and tested Always Evolving® workflows more difficult, adding significant time to some development tasks.
We provided information about alternative hosting options that would remove the obstacles to Urban Creation, demonstrating how these options would make our work more efficient, creating more value for the client. Our hosting recommendations create a positive ripple effect:
- Improved security by removing unnecessary software
- Performance improvements by utilising features such as a CDN, caching and a web server optimised for WordPress
- Better UX, conversion rates and SEO scores, contributed to by speed and performance improvements
Investing time like this at the very beginning of working with a new client helps ensure we get the right infrastructure and site setup in place, creating smoother processes for the future. This means we can focus the rest of our time on tasks that improve the website, increase site traffic and conversions, and bring our clients a higher return on investment.
We’ll make your existing website better
Your website was built by another agency or developer but you want to give it to a safe pair of hands to enhance it.
Challenge accepted.
Re-defining digital strategy
Urban Creation has evolved as a business over time. Whilst their core mission has remained the same; to develop and design living spaces that go beyond exceptional, their public facing digital expression of what they do had become blurry.
“Prior to engaging with Atomic Smash, our websites were failing to effectively communicate our services to our target audiences. As our brand continued to grow, it became evident that a strategic overhaul was necessary to better showcase our diverse offerings. This led us to the decision to create sub-brands, allowing us to tailor our messaging and marketing efforts to each specific audience.”
The name Urban Creation had been stretched between a construction company, property development, student housing provider and serviced apartments/hoteliers. Their branding, domain-names, on-site content and navigation wasn’t helping them communicate with their specific target audiences about their unique offerings. We worked with Urban Creation to re-define their digital strategy.
“Working closely with Atomic Smash, we undertook a thorough evaluation of our existing digital landscape. Their expertise and guidance helped us develop a clear strategy that included restructuring our web presence. This resulted in the creation of a brand new landing page for Urban Creation as well as two distinct sub-websites for our student accommodation and serviced apartments divisions.”
Solutions
Site migration and managed hosting
Our primary recommendation was managed WordPress hosting through Kinsta, which handles much of the DevOps required to run a server, for smarter use of our client’s budget.
We know from experience that investing more time at the beginning of a project to improve the infrastructure, site setup and processes, ends up saving time that would be otherwise wasted on non-development tasks.
We pursued this approach to ensure that our development time could be tailored to important tasks that improve the website, increase site traffic and conversions.
This helps us provide a more efficient and streamlined working relationship with the client, giving them a much better return on investment on their Always Evolving® time.
After migrating the website, it is loading faster and is more responsive for end customers visiting the site. We recorded a significant performance increase and higher SEO scores, achieved prior to other major improvements on the site that will continue improving these areas.
Average performance improvements from hosting solutions:
Server Response Times (average across pages tested)
- Before: 0.741 seconds
- After: 0.314 seconds
- Improvement: 58%
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Clear signposting and efficient user journeys
We worked with Urban Creation to re-define their digital strategy. This involved:
- Creating a brand new site that summarises the company and its history
- Clear call-to-actions (CTAs) to specific areas of the business such as Serviced Apartments & Student Lets
- Optimising for the highest performance – their new site has consistently scored 100/100 in performance for desktop since launch, and averages 98/100 on mobile
- Defining, migrating and re-routing new domain names of their two existing sites
“The impact of these changes has been significant. We now have a refined marketing strategy that delivers clear and consistent messaging to our target audiences. This has not only improved our reach but also ensured that we are connecting with the right audience in meaningful ways.”
We also updated their sites with:
- New branding and content
- Sticky navigation to streamline the route to booking/checkout
- Re-structured layout of information to improve UX and accessibility
- Back-end updates to enable the client to host video content
- Social proof such as customer reviews and testimonials
- A banner to highlight USPs to ease and improve conversion
- Improved cookie management for legal compliance
- On-site integration of newsletter signup forms to retain engagement with prospective customers
“In addition to implementing new website structures and backend web developments, we embarked on a comprehensive rebranding strategy that involved creating fresh visual identities. Atomic Smash was instrumental in designing new front-end layouts for each of our websites, adhering to our brand guidelines. ”
These visually appealing designs not only enhanced user experience (UX) but also improved navigation, making it easier for prospective guests to navigate through the booking process seamlessly.
“Furthermore, the incorporation of new content blocks in the backend has given us the flexibility to update and modify the layout as our business evolves. This ensures that we can adapt to changing needs and maintain an online presence that aligns with our brand identity.”
Visit Urban Creation’s website
What we achieved
Site migration and managed hosting
Streamlined user journeys to improve conversions
New site structures and digital architecture
Higher site performance scores
New functionality for better user engagement
Improved UX and accessibility
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In numbers
100/100
new site performance for desktop
98/100
new site performance for mobile
58%
improvement in response time
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The last word
We are thrilled with the results of our redesigned websites and are grateful for the dedication of the Atomic Smash team. The communication throughout the project was exceptional, with clear explanations of all work undertaken. Their contributions went beyond fulfilling the initial brief; they also shared valuable insights and innovative ideas. We highly value the collaborative approach and strategic input provided by Atomic Smash.
Let’s investigate!
We’ll make your existing websites exceptional. Let’s start with an audit so we can identify any issues or opportunities.
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