Golley Slater – Wales’ leading PR agency for over 65 years

A revitalised digital identity for Golley Slater

After diversifying their expertise through the acquisition of several specialist agencies, Golley Slater found their brand requirements had naturally evolved over time. In response, they undertook a comprehensive internal rebranding and repositioning strategy. The objective was to accurately represent their expanded service portfolio and adapt to a dynamic marketplace.

The updated brand identity drove the need for a new face in the digital world, and that’s where Illustrate Digital stepped in. Plans for a new website that reflected the updated Golley Slater brand would be focused on showing off their exceptional work, and streamlining the processes around how clients make contact.

Bringing Golley Slater’s creative vision to life with insightful UX consultation

Initially, our UX team embarked on an in-depth phase of competitor and user research. Our objective was to pinpoint the specific digital requirements of the client’s industry. Additionally, we assessed the engagement patterns of Golley Slater’s diverse customer base, including both B2B and B2C segments.

The research phase yielded compelling insights, which became invaluable in steering successful creative decisions throughout the project. These insights not only confirmed the validity of Golley Slater’s brand direction but also highlighted opportunities where user experience could be enhanced.

While Golley Slater brought a vivid creative vision to the table, it’s up to our team of UX designers to deliver a successful translation into an effective website UI design system. This mapped out the way forward to a very bespoke, user-centric solution that perfectly aligns with their newly reimagined brand identity, and delivers on the main project requirements.

Meeting the needs of a diverse audience

Understanding the unique needs of Golley Slater’s audience was a cornerstone in our website development strategy. The site caters to a range of user goals, from prospective clients seeking to initiate new projects, to new talent exploring career opportunities within the company.

For users looking for services, the website is much more than a service listing. It offers a number of ways to facilitate quick and seamless enquiries, while also providing detailed and accessible information. This includes insights into the sectors served, key clients, and an extensive portfolio of case studies to represent the breadth of knowledge and skills of Golley Slater. The goal is to enable potential clients to not only actively engage with the available services but also to get inspired on how they could elevate their own advertising efforts.

When it comes to talent acquisition, Golley Slater’s captivating case studies serve as a compelling recruitment tool. These are not just accounts of successful projects; they encapsulate the company’s culture and provide tangible insights into what it’s like to be part of the Golley Slater team. This is built on with a visual timeline highlighting the agency’s heritage, along with the endorsements of highly respected testimonials from global brands to tell the full story of the brand.

Ultimately, the website aims to be a facilitator to all users, helping them accomplish their specific objectives; whether that means discovering new service and collaboration opportunities, charting a career path, or simply seeking inspiration.

A modular design system for precision content marketing

We developed a UI design system deeply rooted in Golley Slater’s brand ethos. The system comprises of flexible content blocks and reusable components, designed to offer a scalable, efficient solution for content creation. This framework allowed for flexibility where required, whilst making it easy for content creators to maintain a cohesive brand identity.

By providing a range of diverse content component blocks, it frees-up the content creators to target different audience types in new and inspiring ways. An effective example of this was the creation of call to action content blocks that could be placed anywhere on any page, creating new opportunities to easily communicate with the team.

Transforming Golley Slater’s digital presence with bespoke WordPress development

While visually appealing, their previous site built on WordPress was an example of form overshadowing function in some areas. The initial implementation lacked efficiency and a focus on conversion, making content management cumbersome and affecting the overall user experience.

We extended WordPress by developing a number unique content blocks and custom site options to solve these issues and empower the Golley Slater team. Our primary aim was to simplify content management, and ensure that they can take full ownership and control of the site’s content.

One additional requirement was the need for a multilingual setup that supported both English and Welsh. We have developed multilingual sites many times, and understand the challenges the client faces with this. We implemented a seamless content editing experience that not only allows for easy toggling between languages but also works harmoniously with the site’s creatively rich UI.

Simplifying the backend with custom development was only part of the solution. It takes an experienced team to deliver a visually rich user interface that’s fully editable, whilst ensuring the site loads quickly and provides an accessible experience to all visitors. The end result is a WordPress site that aligns with Golley Slater’s brand vision while being exceptionally user-friendly and conversion-oriented. It’s not just a website; it’s a strategic tool designed to meet specific business objectives.