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Hay Group is a global management consultancy with 88 offices in 47 countries and more than 7,000 clients worldwide from the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.
What started as an audit of the business’s web presence, evolved into a project that included a root and branch redesign and rebuild of the company’s website, the development of an internal and external communications strategy to support the imminent roll out of the site and much in between.
The target audience is Hay Group’s internal consultants and its 7,000 strong external client base ranging from C-Level to HR Managers and Executives and the 60,000 website subscribers. Within this, the key target audiences were identified as buyer, influencer, user, press and staff.
Internally, there was very little support for the Hay Group global website. Externally, traditional competitors of Hay Group are harnessing Web 2.0 to engage users and encourage repeated visits, and two of the company’s main rivals have totally overhauled their web presence.
Hay Group understood that it needed to make its online presence more user-friendly and more engaging and rewarding for visitors. In order to convert more business, Hay Group had to develop a stronger relationship with visitors.
Concurrent to this, Hay Group had launched a new set of brand guidelines across its global business. The business wanted its online presence to reflect this and briefed Concep Evolution to run an audit of the website.
The Pain
The objectives of Concep Evolution’s campaign for Hay Group have been manifold and have developed alongside the evolution of the project.
Central to the project was Hay Group’s need to:
- Restructure the global website in a way that “brings the Hay Group brand to life”;
- Synchronise with a global rebranding and integrate global brand values through the use of imagery and content; and
- Create a more usable website that engages both the internal audience of consultants and the external client base.
The Solution
Less a re-launch and re-branding of Hay Group’s online presence, this was more a revolution of its online philosophy. Every element of the website was dismantled, examined and reconfigured. The rebuild was not simply based on a notion of what their audiences wanted; plans for the new architecture were drawn from months of thorough research which questioned long held beliefs about who the audiences were and how they behaved.
Concep Evolution’s robust methodology and thorough understanding of online audiences has seen the project evolve from an initial audit of Hay Group’s website to a fully-fledged ongoing professional relationship.
Not only has the website undergone a root and branch overhaul, Concep Evolution has been charged with developing a global communications strategy around the imminent launch of the website, to both an internal and an external audience.
The website was tested against four main criteria: brand reinforcement, usability, technical performance and compliance with W3C Level 2. Against each criterion the website failed.
Concep Evolution produced a 68-page audit document that clearly articulated what it felt Hay Group’s next steps should be. Top of this list was the requirement for full scale research to rigorously examine, and question Hay Group’s assumptions of, who the audiences were, both internally and externally; how these distinct audiences perceived the site; and what the user journey was for those engaging with haygroup.com.
The research was both qualitative and quantitative and was undertaken across Hay Group’s global audiences.
Qualitative research took the form of 37 face-to-face interviews with those that form the Hay Group internal audience and have regular and meaningful contact with clients across the company’s global network.
This was supported by quantitative research. The project team tracked the 1,000 most recent subscribers to haygroup.com and asked them – via an online survey – a series of questions examining who they are, the level at which they work, the reasons for visiting the site, the information sought, and the ease with which this information could be obtained.
Of the 1,000 most recent subscribers there was a 20 per cent response rate. This was augmented by one per cent of website visitors who clicked through from the main page and completed the same questionnaire.
Thirty-two per cent of Hay Group consultants felt “information is difficult to find”, while only four per cent would recommend the site to clients and three per cent use the site themselves.
Of those users who responded to the online survey, only 26 per cent found what they were looking for when visiting the site and only 23 per cent visit the site as often as once a month; others visited less frequently.
The research findings were presented to the global executive team – which included the CEO, the CMO and the head of technology at Hay Group - validating the audit’s findings and adding credence to Concep Evolution’s recommendations for the development of the website.
According to Dwain Thomas, managing director, Concep Evolution, this process was vital in securing client buy-in.
Hay Group’s initial perception was that visitors to its website were of C-Suite or HR Director level, whereas Concep Evolution’s research indicated that more than 50 per cent of the time the site was visited by professionals working at executive or administration level.
Starting with a blank canvas, the agency worked with the steering committee in a series of workshops aimed at identifying the key audiences and – by setting specific tasks and mapping user journeys - creating a website built around their specific needs.
This enabled Concep Evolution to develop an architecture structured around the needs and requirements of Hay Group’s clients and not the company itself, which had previously been the case.
There are several other problems with the current iteration of Hay Group’s website. The site design is clunky, off-putting, hard to navigate, too US-centric in its focus and not built for search optimisation.
The new site has at its heart the company’s brand. Hay Group is all about people: to reflect this, the new site has people at its core. Thought leaders are positioned at the forefront of haygroup.com. There is a focus of the company’s global reach, emphasising its spread across 47 countries and 33 languages.
Focusing on the client’s needs, navigation has been dramatically simplified, content has been repositioned and the design made more attractive and now adheres to the company’s global brand guidelines.
Features have been developed to attract users, to engage them, to encourage repeat visits and to convert new business. Where before content was static and unwieldy, there are now podcasts, vodcasts, RSS feeds and webinars for training and education.
The Result
What began as an audit of Hay Group’s website evolved into an ongoing business relationship. Concep Evolution is now involved in developing the marketing and communications around site launch, to both the internal and external audiences.
As a result of Concep Evolution’s rigorous and professional methodology what began as a standalone commission is now an ongoing relationship.
The site is yet to go live, so user analytics are unavailable. The internal team at Hay Group however, have demonstrated 100 per cent acceptance of the new site. And predictions are that there will be a steep rise from the base level of just four per cent of consultants who were willing to direct their clients to the existing haygroup.com.
Targets in place for the new site include a predicted 25 per cent uplift in visitors and a 50 per cent increase in contact requests.
What the client says
Hayley Brooksbank, head of global brand and communications at Hay Group says “ We worked with Concep Evolution for a year and though our internal development team are undertaking the final build, Concep Evolution have held our hand every step of the way. They became part of the team and their dedication to us was obvious which made the whole project easier to manage and to get through. No one relishes the job of overhauling a complete website, and we are not totally out of the woods yet (launch is planned for 16th June) but working with Concep Evolution made the audit and design process surprisingly painless.”
