Cross-platform Website solution

Event Essex

“Working with Mackman has been a really good experience for Event Essex. We were able to work collaboratively with the team to ensure that our incredibly tight deadline was met, and Mackman have provided excellent support and communication throughout the whole process. We really appreciate the flexibility that Mackman have shown when it comes to adapting the usual working process in order to meet our deadline, and are incredibly pleased with the final site. Our new website has now gone live and we are looking forward to being able to continue to update and evolve it with ease. Thank you Mackman!”

Josie Beckett, Marketing Officer - University of Essex Campus Services

The Client

Event Essex provide conference, meeting and event facilities at the Colchester and Southend campuses of the University of Essex. These services are for internal clients from the University, as well as external organisations and the public sector. Event Essex also offer accommodation in both locations during the summer months to groups such as summer language schools and residential conferences.

In 2014, the organisation was previously known as Venue Essex. It undertook a strategic marketing review, which resulted in a complete re-brand, with its name changed to Event Essex.

Event Essex approached Mackman for a new website to reflect its new name, ethos and brand.

The Challenge

The previous Venue Essex website was difficult to administer due to the platform it had been built on and wasn’t suitable for use on mobile or tablet devices.

Event Essex needed a new website to reflect their change in strategic direction. It was crucial the website had the following design elements and functionality:

• On site search
• Be fully responsive
• Easy to maintain post launch
• Optimised for search
• Clear call to actions to increase enquiries

Event Essex required a newly built website within a tight time frame of just four to five weeks, ready for a national academic venue show which aimed to officially launch the new Event Essex brand to the public.

What we did

• A fully responsive and content managed website was developed and launched in four weeks, ready for the Academic Venue Show launch
• The new website was built on WordPress allowing the Event Essex team to easily maintain and amend the website from launch
• A content audit and website wire-framing workshop highlighted changes to the site-map to improve user experience
• The branding was implemented across the website with a modern feel and allowed Event Essex to effectively showcase their venues facilities
• Clear call to actions were strategically placed across the website to drive enquiries

What we achieved

A comparison of analytics from the original Venue Essex website to the new responsive Event Essex website built by Mackman has shown:

• 58% increase in average duration on the website
• over 4% increase in mobile sessions in the first month