Corstorphine & Wright

StrategiQ have had the fortune of working with the team at Corstorphine & Wright for a number of years. During this time we have had the opportunity to build up a deep understanding of the architectural practice and their core audience needs despite inheriting the previous iteration of their website.

When looking approach the new design and build project, our insights team comprising of technical SEO, CRO and analytics undertook a detailed audit of current performance to uncover critical insights that would inform the subsequent design and build stages of the project.

Actionable insights such as traffic makeup within the industry sector highlighted key learnings such has 80%+ of site traffic still being driven by desktop devices. As well as this there was a clear indication of the importance of balancing project and people focussed content across the site to aid in confidence building and qualification.

With over 40 years of heritage Corstorphine & Wright are an architects with a unique reputation for intelligent design. When approached to help the team sharpen their branding in preparation for the new website we knew that attention to detail would be the driving force behind every design made.

Decisions were driven by a core team including the Group Directors, with the aim of respecting the current brand styling whilst also validate national presence in preparations for an international offering. The brand styling was updated with a bespoke typeface, the decision was made to remove the + to replace it with the consistent & symbol to reflect the balance and unity of the brand.

Lastly a modernized colour scheme was introduced as coupled with an updated styleguide to inform the presentation of visual elements including photography.

As a practice led by design decisions the User Experience and User Interface was a primary driver for this project. With the aim of appealing to multiple audiences and setting the right impression by communicating their passion for design. The navigation and theme was overhauled with a desktop first mindset without compromising the mobile experience.

Considered page layouts where crafted to deliver projects in an editorial style whilst bringing the people sections to the forefront in a way that would inspire both clients and potential candidates.

Page templates and components were designed to be clean and simple but also allowing creativity to flow with dynamic styling and interactive elements throughout. With an image focus and media diversity messaging is conveyed in a creative way with text used sparingly to ensure that the design elements effectively breathe and tell the story needed.

WordPress was chosen as the preferred CMS option as it provides the team with a scalable and accessible back end experience. With a custom content management layout and bespoke suite of components allowing C&W’s in-house marketing team to maintain and prioritise its impressive portfolio of architectural design and expanding team of professionals.

Clever taxonomy was implemented creating reciprocal connections between content which feeds key pages. For example when a new architect is added, they can be connected to particular projects and studios which subsequently feed connected pages. As we continue to drive improvements and evolve the site our next focus is creating a custom onsite search function to further enhance user experience and content discoverability.

Performance and speed were a key driver for the project so the highest development standards were leveraged throughout the development cycle with particular attention paid towards how the site performed against Google Core Web Vitals metrics. As such the site has launched with 100% performance scores on both Desktop and Mobile.