Unlocking WordPress for the Enterprise
93digital, a WP Engine Agency Partner, helped Mitie, the UK’s leading facilities management company, move from a developer-reliant, proprietary CMS, to a fully-redesigned WordPress site that allows for greater agility.
Industry: Digital agency + Facilities management
Site: https://www.mitie.com/ | by: https://93digital.co.uk/
Challenge: Migration and site redesign for an enterprise client. Mitie tapped 93digital for a complete UX and navigation overhaul + integrations with APIs, legacy platforms, and marketing automation software.
Solution: 93digital mapped out the project, from strategy to migration and site design to WordPress development, and worked with a dedicated team at WP Engine and to execute its vision.
Results: With a lean, easy-to-use website that’s optimized for user experience, Mitie has been able to respond to rapid changes during the Covid-19 pandemic, and use its website to empower internal stakeholders while generating a steady stream of inbound leads.
93digital is an entirely in-house, full time, and onsite specialist WordPress agency team that has become one of the fastest-growing digital agencies in the UK. Named a Top UK Web Development Partner by Clutch in 2020, by Clutch in 2020, 93digital specialise in working with B2B clients in the technology, software, SaaS and services sectors whilst other clients include Open Banking, Telefonica, CNN & University of Cambridge.
Mitie Group PLC (MITFF) is the UK’s leading facilities management and professional services company. Founded in 1987, Mitie’s nearly 50,000 employees look after a large, diverse, blue-chip customer base, from banks and retailers to hospitals, schools, and critical government strategic assets.
"When we combine our expertise in designing and developing WordPress sites with WP Engine’s reputation and credentials as an enterprise-grade managed host, it checks off the boxes large organizations are often looking for to maintain security, compliance, and performance benchmarks."
—–Alex Price, Founder and Managing Director, 93digital
Enterprise WordPress delivery.
As businesses of all sizes re-examine their digital footprint in response to surging online activity, WordPress is getting a second look from enterprise organizations as a high-ROI replacement for the bulky, proprietary web management systems adopted over the past decade.
Because WordPress is open source, and free from many of the constraints associated with closed SaaS systems, it offers a particularly flexible, cost-effective option for large organizations looking to refresh marketing and communications strategies through a digital-first lens.
This was precisely the case for Mitie, the UK’s leading facilities management and professional services company, which selected 93digital—a WordPress-specialist agency—for help redesigning its corporate website and connected content hubs.
Mitie’s existing site, built on a proprietary CMS that required a developer for even minor changes and updates, had become an impediment to the company’s go-to-market efforts, particularly with regard to customer engagement and lead capture initiatives.
While the need to migrate to a faster, easier-to-manage platform was apparent, Mittie’s larger objective was finding a partner that could provide enterprise delivery of WordPress, including uptime, security, and compliance reassurances, alongside its user experience (UX) needs.
“Enterprise clients such as Mitie benefit from our expertise in designing and developing WordPress sites,” said 93digital Founder and Managing Director Alex Price.
“When we combine that with WP Engine’s reputation and credentials as an enterprise-grade managed host, it checks off the boxes large organizations are often looking for to maintain security, compliance, and performance benchmarks.”
As a Strategic Agency Partner, 93digital was able to leverage WP Engine from the pitch onward, providing Mitie with a comprehensive plan that included best practices for design and navigation, built on dedicated, SOC 2 compliant web architecture via WP Engine’s premium platform.
A powerful, flexible WordPress site.
With a dedicated team at WP Engine playing a support role, the 93digital team took the reins on project specifics, providing their expertise across the following areas:
Persona discovery - with a wide variety of visitors coming to Mitie’s site, 93digital focused on establishing clear user personas and journey mapping for each. This was followed by work on content, information architecture, and improved navigation.
Improved site design - 93digital refreshed the site with a simple, intuitive UX that improved the clarity of user journeys, helping visitors discover more about Mitie while supporting marketing, lead generation, sales enablement, and talent acquisition.
WordPress build - using a WP Engine-hosted WordPress environment, 93digital built a powerful content hub with advanced filtering and search to connect users with a personalized selection of whitepapers, case studies, and videos, all tying back to an overall user experience that was seamless, more purposeful, and ultimately, more effective.
Other aspects of the site build included employee and office directories, which the 93dgitial team integrated with the Google Maps API. Together with their counterparts at WP Engine, they also designed the site to support integration with HubSpot, and be trackable via Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics.
Mitie’s internal teams were also deeply involved in the project and collaborated with 93digital and WP Engine throughout.
“The overall project was one in which 93digital was able to provide our expertise and bring our vision to life, but then tie that enterprise bow around it,” Price said.
“That included leveraging WP Engine’s development and staging environments for rigorous testing, security and penetration testing processes and development workflow requirements that are dealt with in one place, and just the peace of mind you get from working with a managed service that offers around-the-clock support.”
From shop window to digital marketing engine.
With the new site in place, 93digial handed the keys back to Mitie, whose internal teams picked up where they had left off and quickly began self-serving on the new backend.
The successful hand-off was due in no small part to the ease-of-use and accessibility WordPress is well-known for, especially among marketers and content creators.
Additionally, the new site exposed the Mitie team to the WordPress block editor, which provides an even faster, more intuitive way to create dynamic content and quickly push it live.
With that functionality and world-class site design, Mitie was thrilled with the final product— a huge proof point for 93digital in their work with enterprise organizations.
But they weren’t the only ones. The project also took home Gold for Best Website at the 2020 Digital Experience Awards, which honors organizations, teams, and individuals providing exceptional customer experience through the use of digital technology.
The refreshed site has also advanced Mitie’s marketing and communications efforts, with the HubSpot integration helping generate inbound leads through the site almost immediately, including hundreds of monthly inquiries, MQLs, and SQLs.
“Mitie comes from a more traditional business model, where digital marketing channels have not typically played a role in driving lead generation,” Price said.
“However, with a user-focused, web-based approach, all centered around the new site, they’ve been able to take what they thought would be more of a shop window experience and turn it into a digital marketing tool.”
As an example, soon after the site was launched, a large sales enquiry came in via form submission.
“That lead would have arguably come to Mitie through a more traditional channel, like email or a phone call,” Price said, “but I think it was a watershed moment.”
“By using their website for this type of effort, and seeing the results, it’s opened up a lot of possibilities for this really large, high-profile business, and it’s completely changed an organization-wide view of how digital can work for them.”