Clarifying and Amplifying the Expertise of a Successful Architecture Firm
SUCCESS STORY
CELEBRATING 30 YEARS IN A BUSINESS WITH A REFRESHED BRAND POSITIONING AND NEW WEBSITE DESIGN
Client: PZS Architects
Project Timeline: March 2023 - Present
Services Provided: Brand Positioning, Content Creation, Website Design + Development
The Challenge
As PZS Architects embarks on their 30th year in business, they decided it would be a great time to invest in a refreshed website experience that was not only clean and irresistible to prospective clients and recruits, but also highly functional and simple for their busy marketing team to manage. Following a recent move to Station Street, the PZS office is now located directly next to MCO, so it felt (literally) right up our alley to jump in and support our neighbor’s new initiative!
The Process
Some goals of the site itself included showcasing projects with a crisp, modern aesthetic, highlighting the team’s various capabilities, drawing in new hires with PZS’s vibrant company culture, and generating leads and ultimately business from prospects. As we know, a good website is the most important tool for supporting prospects as they engage in their research process. It allows them to easily self-educate, distribute information amongst their key stakeholders, and reinforce positive impressions developed during personal relationships.
Keeping not just the design of the website in mind but also the website content, we began by thinking about what we really wanted the marketplace saying about PZS. To kickoff this project, following a few concepting + collaboration sessions with the PZS owners and stakeholders, our senior content strategist set out to develop and document a refreshed value proposition, new company boilerplates and clearly defined capabilities, as well as mission / vision / values and is/means statements that would help align the PZS team internally.
Our Head of Strategy documented how our site would win, envisioning the user journey for various groups of site visitors, as well as thoughtful guidance around why MCO’s site plan would be effective.
Additional written website content included a fresh homepage, four power pages dedicated to PZS’s four key capabilities, a variety of optimized pages of shorter-form content, as well as three comprehensive case studies highlighting featured projects that have become expansive, ongoing partnerships for PZS.
In parallel, our design team created two different mood boards, suggesting the different directions we could take the look and feel of the site. We also developed a stylescape for each direction to give the visual PZS team a better idea of how the actual website could look.
Once we landed on their desired aesthetic, we moved on to develop low fidelity wireframes and a UI kit to showcase the effective new website layout and corresponding design elements. Next were high fidelity wireframes, the visual, colorful mockups that help us make final decisions on the look and template of the site. Following a collaborative review and ultimate approval of these, we moved into the development phase. The MCO team managed all coding + development for our custom theme to be built with Wordpress functionality. We migrated and sunset the previous website, and implemented proper analytics tracking before our official site launch.
Problem Solved
With the help of the MCO team, PZS Architects was able to elevate their company website, creating an elegant, contemporary + intuitive experience for both external visitors, and the back-end implementation team.
We accomplished this by crafting refreshed, modern brand positioning statements to be utilized throughout the site and in future content and social media programs. We authored content for top website pages and prominent case studies and generally integrated fresh content across all pages of the site, while simultaneously migrating relevant content from the existing PZS site.
Our design team led the development of a seamless user experience, from lo-fi and hi-fi wireframes + a library of components through to development, where the site was built with full user-control for the team that is responsible to continue updating this content - leveraging a custom-built Wordpress theme. We were sure to incorporate proper technology into the site to enable marketing analytics + tracking, and completed this all project within a 3 month timeframe.
The PZS website will grow with their business and provide a central, beautiful education center. Most importantly, their website will help convey their refreshed brand mission and public-facing value propositions which will attract prospective employees and clientele.