The brief

We were tasked with updating the RSL online brand and bringing the website, which sits at the very heart of the business, up to speed visually, as well as improving the online customer experience.

The new site needed to cater for all age groups audience types (teachers and students) and musical capabilities, incorporate RSL’s back-end ordering system and have a visual front-end that’s quick and easy to update. It also needed to be well positioned for SEO, user-friendly, work perfectly on mobile and incorporate several legacy databases.

Key challenges

The main challenges we faced included:

• From a technical perspective, combining the PHP system with the back-end .net system. We needed to build a system that seamlessly jumped from a PHP front-end solution to a .net back-end system throughout the customer journey
• Providing RSL’s marketing team with the fluidity of front-end editor rights while making sure it didn’t impact the functionality of the back-end ordering system
• The website has several tiers of accessibility, ranging from administrators and customers, to teachers and students. We needed to provide different views and user experiences for each of these different audiences

Our approach

• We kicked everything off by carrying out an in-depth stakeholder exercise – this enabled us to carefully evaluate the needs of RSL’s website users
• We then used these findings to plan the website templates and areas we needed to amend and refine
• Our team of digital specialists designed and delivered a prototype walkthrough of the new website environment. This enabled RSL to visualise how the new website would look and function before going live
• Our technical teams worked alongside RSL’s IT department to make sure our system dovetailed perfectly with their system. This also helped make sure there was zero downtime during the switchover

The results

Overall, the RSL team are extremely happy with our work. In fact, the entire project has been such a success, that we’re about to role out phase two.

• RSL’s new website is now easily accessible and has been well positioned for SEO. RSL’s internal teams are very happy with how the new system looks and the value it’s added by providing a better customer experience and generating increased online engagement and sales
• Since launching the site, there’s been an influx of new traffic from various sources and the refined website user journeys have enabled more online orders to have been taken than in previous years
• We’re continuing to work with RSL, providing them with on-going digital support and website maintenance services. We’re also working on phase two of the new website, which will involve further enhancing the customer experience – watch this space!

“Deciding to go with Make Agency was one of the best decisions we’ve made as a company. The team are easy to work with, professional in their approach, and we’ve found them consistently reliable from development of the build for the RSL website through to further development and key business growth”

Lawrence Tribe-Endt ACIM
Marketing Manager - RSL Awards