Client success

Bespoke website for regional business magazine

What is Lancashire Business View?

Lancashire Business View is an award winning business magazine with readership of over 50,000.

It also hosts regular events throughout each year including the Red Rose Awards, Sub36 awards and Lancashire Business Week.

The magazine has been published for 20 years in print and digital editions.

The challenge

The magazine website needed a refresh to make content more easily browsable for readers, and more easily updatable in its content management system.

This meant a refresh of the brand and style, and reorganisation of the menus and search functions.

The back-end also needed updates to provide a better experience for LBV Hub subscribers who use the website to upload news about their businesses.

The process

Understanding the client and their customers

Half-day strategy and design workshops

Strategy and evidence-based decisions

The solution

We ran a successful project together which included:

A strategy workshop to build a full mutual understanding of the business
A design sprint workshop to agree the best structure and layout for the new website
A managed build process with sign off of each section in turn
A new enterprise-level website and CMS with lifespan of 3+ years
An easy-to-use section for LBV Hub subscribers to upload their own news
New search optimisation to better promote subscribers in Google
Ongoing support post-launch to make sure the website is performing well

The new Lancashire Business View website went live at www.lancashirebusinessview.co.uk.

Website design refresh

Improved page layout & usability

Subscriber control panel

On time

On budget

Leads up

“A effective collaborative design process between LBV and Bespoke, with the two teams together in workshops and understanding each other.

“Bespoke developed a plan and spec for the features, layout and design and we approved design mockups before each section was built.

“The finished website was fully tested and right first time, and very smooth for a web project of this size.

“We now have a website that meets our needs as well as the needs of our readers and subscribers.”

Richard Slater

Chairman, Lancashire Business View

“The Bespoke team particularly enjoyed this project because the LBV team communicated their goals so well.

“When the key people are in the initial workshops, and are well prepared, it always makes for a good project.

“We worked through the design and layouts methodically as always, and followed our long-established process.

“Part of the process is that we continue testing post-launch to make sure traffic levels are as they should be, and visitors are finding the site easy to use.

“The dynamic we created together meant we were able to once again launch on time and on budget, and deliver all of the project goals.”