r42 communication

 

Zero to forty-two in two weeks; how to go from nothing into a

Things can change quickly in life and business and being smaller can be a big advantage when you need to move quickly and adapt to change. Starting a new company and having a fully-branded website online within a two week period is a big challenge but one that is possible within smaller organizations.

I've worked side-by-side with the founder since 1997, so the depth of knowledge of strengths and weaknesses was there and a short-hand develops over time. Equally, you come to know the types of priorities placed on situations and can gear toward the types of opportunities that strengths can power through to success. In a nutshell, the analysis that usually takes weeks to complete, was there innately.

Challenges and strategy

Focus on strengths and stay focused on them.

The real advantage on getting this project done in such a short period of time, is the singular focus of Ralph Spandl. Clarity and focus make getting down to business rather easy. Within a morning the brand offering and positioning were completed. Over lunch the site map was drawn up and so we had the afternoon to get started on content.

While the new company had decades of interactive branding experience, the new entity was without a single pixel of an online footprint. So we set out to make one as fast as we could. At that moment in time on the web meant, copy. Lots of copy.

The copy would feed the search engine demands and could easily be supplemented at a later date with visuals and more engaging - interactive elements which take a longer time to produce.

Content development and management

To further streamline the development process and enhanced search engine  and content creator/editor friendliness, r42 deployed the site on a comprehensive content management system - Kentico. This meant that the site's content could be managed by an editor and we could work right within the site as it was being built. It was thus, extremely easy to identify needs as the project moved along.

The second pillar of the online branding strategy included providing credibility by showcasing the breadth and depth of the founder's portfolio of work completed over the past 10 years. That became a corner stone of the site and as with the other pages of the site, the portfolio started with the written word, with visuals being prepared when possible.

Further supporting our content driven approach for the site, we also deployed a blog on the site. While not a blogger or writer of any sort before this site was developed, we knew that there is no better way to demonstrate, in an ongoing manner, expertise and knowhow than through a blog.

SEO

To reinforce our comprehensive SEO, in addition to providing ample written content on the site, the site was deployed with all pages having custom meta title and description content. This meta data is key to a successful SE strategy. The titles and descriptions were written once all page content had been add. This ensured that the appropriateness, relevancy, of the meta data were maximized per page.