Weightmans case study

Top law firm rates Immediacy No. 1 for speed, simplicity and ease of use

When UK law firm Weightmans converted to LLP status and decided on a new corporate visual identity, the firm needed a completely new and improved website to match. Immediacy partner Connect Internet Solutions (CIS) designed, built and rolled out a new site from scratch in just six weeks, leveraging Immediacy's powerful plug-in functionality to deliver a highly bespoke implementation. Staff find the new site easy to work with and clients are able to quickly search for and find the information they need.

Requirement

Weightmans, ranked among the UK's top 75 legal firms, has more than 80 partners, representing over 40 areas of legal expertise in 17 sectors. The firm needed to create a content-rich website that truly reflected the firm's extensive knowledge and reputation. Weightmans wanted a solution that would make it easy for partners and staff to create, manage and update their own content, consistent with the corporate style, and give clients quick, simple and seamless access to a broad range of legal information and know-how. Weightmans also wanted a hosted solution, designed, developed and maintained by an expert service provider. Already a seasoned user of the Immediacy content management system, Weightmans asked Immediacy partner CIS to create a new, more customised website utilising Immediacy's plug-in functionality.

Solution

CIS designed an information architecture which is simple and intuitive for website visitors to navigate. Comprehensive correlation between different pieces of information ensures the seamless delivery of results based on individual client's search criteria. Google Analytics has also been implemented to enable Weightmans to track and analyse visitor behaviour. The site's crisp, clean design reflects Weightmans' professional and people-centric ethos, and, in line with best practice, is accessible to W3C WAI level AA standards for visually impaired site visitors. CIS populated the entire website using copy provided by Weightmans, and managed the transfer of hosting from an existing host to CIS.

Result

Rapid implementation - two months from specification to going live:

Specification agreed 1^st March 2007
Information architecture/design build 3 weeks
Testing to 10^th April 2007 1 week
Content creation and migration 200 pages 2 weeks
Go live 1^st May 2007

High degree of customisation

CIS utilised many of Immediacy's standard features, using custom plug-ins to tune functionality to Weightmans specific requirements.

Standard features

Site search - templated to fit the look and feel of the Weightmans site
Immediacy menu system - to generate the side menu, breadcrumb and sitemap
MetaData plug-in - to generate search-engine friendly metadata in the page header.

Custom plug-ins

CIS also created many bespoke plug-ins, expanding upon the Immediacy metadata to allow the creation of complex relationships between pages. These include:

The ability to easily relate child pages from one section with child pages from another via the Immediacy Editor
Custom search facilities to enable searching of particular page types
The ability to easily tag pages with extended metadata
A facility for users to change the heading and side image for each page, and to cascade this image through child pages
Flexible, templated plug-ins to list paginated lists of items via arbitrary SQL procedures.

High user acceptability and satisfaction

Weightmans' non-technical content editors are confident in using Immediacy to maintain all aspects of the site. "We've been extremely impressed with the way CIS has handled our website development," says marketing director Sarah-Jane Howitt. "The deadline was tight, with only six weeks from start to finish. CIS has been professional, responsive and easy to work with and has delivered a fantastic website which has exceeded our expectations."

Feedback from elsewhere in Weightmans has also been extremely positive:

"Very impressive."
"This all looks very good. It is a much fresher and modern look and also manages to look friendly."
"Love the new website and visual id! Worth all the hard work."
"Congratulations on a great website! Getting good feedback from the team too."
"I think the website looks and works well - well done to all in your team on this project!"

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