Ballie Ballerson is one of London’s most Instagrammable venues, attracting thousands of visitors per week with their novel combination of cocktails and adult sized ball pits. Though Ballie Ballerson have seen huge growth since their launch, a new website was needed to drive further market awareness in key target segments.
- Lead time:
- 3 Months
- Sector:
- Food & Drink
- Target Type:
- B2C
- Demographic:
- 18 - 30 Year Olds
- Website Goal:
- Sell Online Bookings
- Services:
- Web Design, Digital Marketing
- Scope
- Custom Design
- Custom Tracking
- Custom Front-end
- WordPress
- On-going Support
- Design My Night Integration
- Resource
- 1x Website Designer
- 1x Front-End Programmer
- 1x Back-End Programmer
- 1 x Digital Marketing Specialist
- 1x Project Manager
- 1x Quality Assurance Tester
Digital strategy
Ballie Ballerson regularly host hen dos, stag dos, work parties, birthdays and a range of other group social events. To drive sales and revenue there was a clear business case for targeting these group activities through more targeted digital marketing.
To de-risk the project and maximise our success we undertook a ‘win strategy’ approach; reviewing each target set of keywords, reviewing competitive metrics, and measuring our ability to deliver results.
Post-launch website results
Ballie Ballerson wanted to increase their ticket sales online by increasing their visibility in Google and converting more web visitors into paying customers.
Improved experience
With improved navigation and prominent FAQs, customers no longer need to call or email. This reduces the support time for Ballie Ballerson and increases customer satisfaction.
Booking integration
To unify their bookings Ballie Ballerson use a platform called Design My Night. We customised and styled this integration point to be visually consistent with their website and brand.
Injecting some fun
To reflect the Ballie Ballerson brand our team developed a unique ball themed animation for the menu.
SEO landing pages
By creating targeted landing pages for high-volume search terms and aligning content to inbound visitor traffic, we reduced bounce rate by 24%.
Enabling their marketing team
The website has been built with a highly flexible, customised WordPress CMS that enables the marketing team at Ballie Ballerson to create new landing pages, page layouts and content with ease.
In addition to the usual pages, components and custom booking features, Ballie Ballerson also needed the ability to create new locations and venues as part of their exciting business expansion plan.
“Plug & Play have utilised knowledge, experience and care to help build all elements of our site. Their support has been great! We’ve built a site which stands in amazing stead for natural search as a small business. Through content recommendations and relevant hierarchy choices, Plug & Play have been integral in our SEO traffic numbers.”
Related work
Hart Brown are a law firm based in London and Surrey with a broad range of commercial and personal services ranging from HR and commercial dispute resolution to divorce and clinical negligence. We rebuilt the Hart Brown website, with the primary goal of increasing traffic and improving conversion rates in order to generate more leads.
- Lead time:
- 6 Months
- Sector:
- Law
- Target Type:
- B2C & B2B
- Demographic:
- Individuals & Businesses
- Website Goal:
- Generate Leads
- Services:
- Web Design, Digital Marketing
Challenge
Hart Brown wanted to increase their visibility for highly competitive search terms in the London and Surrey areas. As a well-established company, they were keen to go after some of the more competitive keywords to increase their search engine visibility. The goal was to focus on the research stage of the conversion funnel. They wanted to be found by clients searching for lawyers and solicitors with more general keywords such as “Trust Lawyers Surrey.”
Post-launch website results
Hart Brown target both businesses and consumers across a range of departments. By collaborating with Hart Brown’s internal marketing team we made huge improvements to their keyword rankings in Google.
Post-launch keyword results
- Scope
- WordPress CMS
- Responsive Design
- SEO Strategy
- SEO Optimisation
- On-going Support
- Resource
- 1x Marketing Strategist
- 1x Digital Marketing Specialist
- 1x Website Designer
- 1x Front-End Programmer
- 1x Back-End Programmer
- 1x Project Manager
SEO Strategy
We developed a very broad SEO strategy that encompassed all of Hart Brown’s key departments and offices.
WordPress CMS
The Hart Brown marketing team were enabled to manage and update content, images, menus and pages with an easy to use CMS.
B2B and B2C
With a broad target audience the website needed to be easy to use for a broad cross section of visitors.
Brand
We collaborated with Hart Brown’s branding agency to ensure that their website had a visual consistency inline with the agency’s vision.
Collaboration
Hart Brown have an in-house marketing team that manage all of their communication material and events. Their knowledge of the legal sector, their target audiences and competitors was very extensive. This knowledge, combined with our external perspective, insights from other businesses and successful strategies, led to a fantastic website that benefited from the mix of skills and expertise.
Geo-targeting
We executed a strategy for bespoke landing pages for each office location. Users from search engines can land on geo-targeted location pages which act as a gateway to the rest of the website. This was highly successful in targeting audiences in specific regions.
Related work
Grand Prix Events
A 111% increase in eCommerce conversion rate for a leading ticket retailer.
Grand Prix Events is an established online retailer that sells tickets in the luxury sports sector. Building on their wealth of experience in eCommerce, they recognised the need to develop a new website that would increase their revenue. They needed to develop their organic keyword positions in search engines and improve their online conversion rate.
- Lead time:
- 12 months
- Sector:
- Events / Tickets
- Target Type:
- B2C and B2B
- Demographic:
- Wealthy Consumers / Hospitality
- Website Goal:
- Sell Tickets
- Services:
- eCommerce Web Design, Digital Marketing, Brand
- Awards:
- UK Digital Growth Awards - eCommerce Site Of The Year Nomination
- Scope
- Custom Design
- SVG Interactive Maps
- Branding
- WooCommerce
- WordPress
- Varnish Cache & Global CDN Management
- IP Location Detection
- Multi-currency
- SEO
- CRO
- PPC Management
- Xero Integration
- Content Migration
- Ongoing support
- Resource
- 2x Website Designers
- 1x Brand Designer
- 2x Front-End Developers
- 2x Back-End Developers
- 1x Project Manager
- 2x Quality Assurance Testers
- 1x SEO Strategist
- 1x Digital Marketing Specialist
- 1 x PPC specialist
Post-launch website results
We focused on streamlining the user journey and implemented designs that reassured visitors through the conversion funnel. This resulted in significant improvements to engagement, eCommerce conversion rate and revenue.
Our approach
Our new design focused on high quality imagery that illustrated the excitement of attending a Grand Prix. Custom circuit maps help users understand where a seat is located, and image galleries on the product pages show users the view from each seat.
Location detection
Depending on where you are in the world the website can automatically detect your location and supply the ticket prices in your localised currency.
Xero integration
To streamline operations the website is seamlessly connected to Xero, the accountancy software. This enables orders and invoices to be raised automatically, cutting down on back-office admin work.
Multi-Currency
The website takes sales in 4 currencies, with each Grand Prix having its own base currency in the back-end.
Conversion rate focus
The website has been designed to massively increase the online conversion rate. We saw large increases in visitor to purchasing rates following launch.
Search engine optimisation
A key consideration for the launch of the new Grand Prix Events website was SEO. Increasing search visibility in Google and improving rankings for key search terms is the first step in increasing online conversions, so we undertook a detailed SEO review of the website; optimising urls, on page content and meta titles and descriptions as well as implementing a comprehensive 301 strategy before launch.
Our SEO research showed us that users searched for specific races using keywords such as ‘British Grand Prix tickets’ or ‘Tickets to the Australian GP’. To provide the best user experience, we created landing pages for every race, enabling search engines to rank the most relevant pages and send users directly to specific Grand Prix pages. Each Grand Prix page contains useful information about attending the event and a variety of different ticket and package options. A secondary navigation allows users to navigate easily through each of the pages relevant to the race they’re interested in.
“Plug & Play understood our vision of creating an industry leading online platform to promote sports hospitality and event ticket sales. From start to finish they were always on hand to support us throughout. Deadlines and the proposed budget were met. I would highly recommend working with the Plug & Play team of experts.”
PPC campaigns
Our team recommended a number of Google Ads Search Campaigns to reach new audiences and support global ticket sales for F1 events. Campaigns were seasonal and location-specific which required careful management to ensure the budget was used effectively.
Our PPC management process focused on reducing the cost per conversion, increasing impression share and improving traffic quality. We did this by reallocating budget based on performance, and implementing tighter keyword and geographic targeting.
Developing the brand
Our brief was to develop a subtle evolution of the brand that would still be instantly recognisable by Grand Prix Events’ existing client base. We focused on refining what was already there, making the form and shape of their device more unique and distinct.
Brand Guidelines
Related work
Home & Roost sell hutches, runs and accessories for rabbits and other domestic pets. Seeking to expand on their success, they approached Plug & Play for a new eCommerce solution and a digital marketing strategy.
- Lead time:
- 4 Months
- Sector:
- Retail
- Target Type:
- B2C
- Demographic:
- Family Consumers
- Website Goal:
- Increase Online Sales
- Services:
- eCommerce Web Design, Digital Marketing
- Scope
- Resource
- 1x Brand Designer
- 1x Website Designer
- 1x Website Developer
- 1x Project Manager
- 1x Quality Assurance Tester
- 1x Marketing Strategist
- 1x SEO Specialist
- 1x PPC Specialist
Post-launch website results
In order to drive revenue for Home and Roost, we focused on delivering material improvements to their organic Google keyword positions, eCommerce conversion rate and Google Ad campaigns.
Challenge
When we started work with Home & Roost, their website was experiencing issues with page speed, lack of content and poor keyword targeting. As a result, their SEO was poor and their PPC campaigns were struggling with high costs and lower than expected returns. We overhauled their digital marketing strategy and rebuilt their website, delivering a significant return on investment.
Google Ads and conversion rate optimisation
After an initial review of Home & Roost’s existing Google Ads account we realised that we needed to rebuild their campaigns from the ground up. Within a few months, we were able to increase their revenue from PPC visitors by more than 146%. We achieved this by reducing their CPC (Cost Per Click) by 52% and increasing their PPC eCommerce conversion rate by 50%.
Improving display advertising
When we initially took control of the Home & Roost display advertising it was struggling with high costs, low click volume and poor audience targeting.
Following our work, year on year impressions were up more than 13%, clicks grew by more than 874% and the click through rate was up by about 758%. All of this was achieved with a negligible increase in the budget.
“Working with the team at Plug & Play has been a pleasure, their professional and positive attitude to whatever you throw at them is refreshing and from past experience most welcome. P&P’s desire to understand our business from the start of our relationship has enabled us to grow into new areas of the market we hadn’t considered before.
We see Plug and Play as part of our business family rather than an agency we use and look forward to the future as we go from strength to strength.”
The website
We delivered a WordPress website with WooCommerce to provide an elevated user experience to Home & Roost’s customers. Our team increased the accessibility of product pages and created an SEO strategy to guide the website structure and build.
The new website and marketing strategy was business-changing for Home & Roost, dramatically increasing revenue and creating a flexible platform for continued growth.
SEO optimised
We improved Home & Roost’s rankings by targeting valuable organic keywords that would drive sales. We assigned a keyword focus for each page and generated new engaging content. We created product page content to encourage search engine rankings and drive conversions.
Post-launch keyword results
Related work
Save the Student is a highly successful blog with millions of visitors per month, generating revenue through affiliate links and advertising. Our brief was to develop a modern, mobile optimised, responsive website that improved their on-page search engine optimisation with structured microdata and schema. We delivered a platform on WordPress that was highly scalable, easy to manage and maintain, that would build on existing SEO positions and look great across all mobile devices.
- Lead time:
- 6 Months
- Target Type:
- B2C
- Demographic:
- Students
- Website Goal:
- Generate Revenue
- Services:
- Web Design, Frontend Development, SEO
- Scope
- Custom Design
- WordPress
- Data Migration
- Speed Optimisation
- Digital Marketing Strategy
- SEO Consultancy
- Resource
- 1x Digital Marketing Specialist
- 1x Website Designer
- 2x Front-End Programmers
- 2x Back-End Programmers
- 1x Project Manager
- 1x Quality Assurance Tester
Engaging with students
The website had to bring their content to life, and needed to load quickly – especially on mobile devices that make up a large percentage of visitors.
For a publisher such as Save the Student, there’s huge value in the engagement of their readers. To increase their subscribed audience we introduced micro-interactions to increase newsletter subscriptions, as well as click-through affiliate links that create revenue.
Solution
It was important we didn’t alienate loyal readers with a significant visual shift, so our design team created a concept that remained in line with the existing Save the Student brand but with a modernised look and feel. The Save the Student purple is used throughout the website and is complimented by strong colours used to differentiate between each section.
Mobile first
With over a million visitors per month, the majority of which are on mobile devices, ensuring that the website interactions and call to actions were optimised for mobile was integral to this project.
Search engine optimised
Save the Student have a huge online footprint with high Google rankings for very competitive search terms. We needed to make solid recommendations to ensure that we built on this previous success with minimal risk.
Data migration
With thousands of legacy articles data migration was the biggest risk in this project. Our development team started the project with an initial migration of data so they were working with real content. Over the months, Save the Student continued to update their current site with their articles as the new website came together. After several rounds of rigorous testing it was time to impose a content freeze on the live site, run a final data migration and put the site live.
Related work
Thakeham are a Times Fast Track 100 company; a rapidly growing house builder based in West Sussex. They needed a website that could support their new brand and provide a content management system that would give the Thakeham marketing team the dexterity they need to manage their online presence.
- Lead time:
- 3 Months
- Sector:
- Construction
- Target Type:
- B2B and B2C
- Demographic:
- Home Owners
- Website Goal:
- Generate New Enquiries
- Services:
- Web Design, Web Development, On-going Digital Marketing
- Scope
- WordPress CMS
- Responsive Design
- Custom Back-End
- Rightmove Integration
- Zoopla Integration
- Property Search
- On-going Support
- Resource
- 1x Marketing Strategist
- 1x Digital Marketing Specialist
- 1x Website Designers
- 1x Front-End Programmers
- 1x Back-End Programmers
- 1x Project Manager
- 1x Quality Assurance Testers
Post-launch website results
We created and implemented a keyword strategy for Thakeham Homes which resulted in large improvements to organic keyword positions.
Thakeham came to Plug & Play looking for four individual websites to reflect their brand. One was to replace their current website, and three further sites were commissioned to launch sub-brands, segmenting their offering and enabling more specific customer targeting.
The Thakeham websites are primarily used to present new developments and homes that are up for sale. As such, the overall design and finesse required a complete overhaul to align Thakeham’s online presence with the quality of homes that they build and sell.
A flexible CMS
The result is the creation of four sleek and beautiful new websites with a common structure to provide brand consistency across the sub-brands. The content of each site has been aligned to the target audience, and the Thakeham marketing team has complete autonomy to make amends. The large quantity of content is displayed intuitively for the user, resulting in a polished user journey.
SEO
With the critical role that the Thakeham websites play in the house sales process, visibility in the search engines is imperative. Plug & Play undertook comprehensive research to produce a keyword strategy for each of the Thakeham websites to ensure that each was optimised for the most valuable customer searches. Keyword and conversion tracking were set up before go live to enable the Thakeham internal marketing teams to successfully track the results from marketing campaigns.
A comprehensive 301 redirect strategy was also implemented upon go live so that all returning visitors can navigate the site with ease.
Post-launch keyword results
“I have been working with Plug & Play for a couple of years – firstly for the delivery of our new company website, and now on a day to day basis liaising over website strategy, including content, SEO and new functionality.
The team at Plug & Play is a pleasure to work with – friendly, open and honest, very responsive – they have not let me down even when I think I am being really demanding! I highly recommend Plug & Play.”
Ongoing digital marketing retainer
Thakeham were keen to ensure they didn’t stand still once the new websites were live. We are continuing to work with Thakeham’s dynamic in-house marketing team on an ongoing basis, focusing on driving engagement and brand awareness through digital marketing.
