Corstorphine & Wright

Corstorphine & Wright is an award-winning architecture practice with 11 studios nationwide. Currently ranked 22 in the AJ100 of the UK’s leading Architecture Practices, the firm has a wealth of creative projects in its portfolio. These include large mixed use schemes, student and high rise city living, industrial & logistics and health, as well as well-known landmarks such as The Royal Liver Building regeneration project in Liverpool and new retail destination at London’s Waterloo Station.

StrategiQ’s partnership with Corstorphine & Wright is a long one, built on a mutual trust and respect for design-led principles. The firm initially contacted StrategiQ with a rebranding project which led to StrategiQ being appointed to create a new website for the company. The business objectives were as follows:
• To become a Top 10 UK practice: The AJ100 (Architecture Journal) recognises the largest architecture firms in the UK. C&W needed a website that would scale in line with the company’s growth
•Develop into new sectors: C&W wanted to attract an audience of prospects and clients in new industries, so the website should showcase relevant projects and services in a visually appealing way
•Increase national presence: there was a need to ramp up the organic search strategy in order that C&W would appear high in search for targeted keywords, both around the UK, and ultimately, the world
•Showcase the team and attract new talent – the website was required to attract a steady stream of qualified candidates while making the team feel proud to work for the practice.

StrategiQ tendered alongside big agency names from Birmingham, but was appointed over these local firms for demonstrating creativity and the best response to the brief. What we did:

Created a new visual identity across all platforms – StrategiQ’s first phase was to create a fresh look and feel for the company. This brandbook features innovations such as the updated logomark, which has transferred seamlessly across digital touchpoints.

Streamlined design and build – our insights team, consisting of Technical SEO, User Experience and analytics experts, undertook a detailed audit of current performance and user behaviour to uncover critical insights that would inform the subsequent design and build stages of the project.

A streamlined, scalable content management system: we refined the legacy data, functionality and plug-ins to create a robust WordPress CMS that is easy to use and can scale with the additional content that the marketing team loads into the system.

Increased user engagement with a fast and responsive site – performance and speed were a key driver for the project so the highest development standards were leveraged throughout the development cycle. As a result, the website met all of Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics that were launched just after the new website, ensuring fast load times.

Created a talent hub to showcase and attract expertise – the new website features a ‘Working with Us’ section, built around ideal candidate personas. Candidates can quickly narrow down their search for their ideal position using intuitive filters, while a team grid showcases the existing expertise within the practice. The result is increased engagement internally, and an increase in prospective applications.

Sector hubs demonstrate expertise, creating leads in new areas – visually, the website demonstrates expertise across sectors such as residential, education, industrial, offices and leisure. This, plus the provision of thought leadership pieces at key points of the buyer journey builds confidence in the firm’s services, helping to establish a higher volume of qualified leads.

Best B2B Website Award – as a result of the hard work between both teams, the new C&W website took Gold at the 2022 UK Dev Awards, demonstrating outstanding examples of implementation, innovation, conversion and creativity.