The Client
Organic Increase
Bounce Rate Reduction
The Client
Oxford City Council provides local government for the city of Oxford and is part of a network of councils covering Oxfordshire including Oxfordshire County Council, Cherwell District Council, West Oxfordshire Council, Vale of White Horse District Council & South Oxfordshire Council.
Oxford City Council approached Assertive for website re-design and development for the commercial arm Oxford Direct Services.
This involved research, planning and scoping exercises to understand key requirements, user experience requirements, content for landing pages and website functionality.
The Challenge
The challenge for Assertive was to build a new, organic friendly / user focused website that incorporated updated design on a new content management platform allowing the client more control.
The challenge also included leveraging organic growth on the back of a new website – this involved new content creation, new landing pages, extended service information & more.
Alongside the new website included new functionality such as an MOT booking platform to help speed up the MOT booking process for Oxford Council MOT’s.
The Goals
The Organic Results
Increase in Organic Traffic in 6 Months
Increase in Organic Traffic in 24 Months
Reduction in Bounce Rate
The New Website
See the transition from the old website to the new website. This included a complete website re-design and content management system migration.
The Strategy
The strategy for Oxford City Council was to break down each set of requirements into independent tasks, identifying, in priority order what was required for the end user as well as service perspective.
We took into consideration the clients wants/requirements to be able to have more control over the website, content and website functionality.
The strategy covered SEO as well as website design and development. Our goal was to build an “SEO” friendly website whilst producing new content focused towards the end user to help drive engagement.
The SEO / Marketing / Design strategy was interconnected, factoring search intent at keyword level alongside service promotion, USPS and functionality. Using services, we were able to conduct service level keyword research followed by competitor analysis & landing page analysis to ascertain the best page layout / framework.
What We Did
Assertive did extensive marketplace research before producing concept designs & SCHEMATICS for a new website that took into consideration service level content & functionality. The new design maintained branding / colours / identity.
The new design was created for a new open source content management system away from a previously, bespoke platform that made editing far more difficult.
Scoping each service, Assertive proposed new functionality to improve service level performance online, making it easier for Oxford residents to interact with services.
One such example was the integrated MOT booking service that included VRM look up for booking as well as being able to book an MOT online.
From MOT bookings through to requesting different bins for waste.
Assertive produced new service level content for the Oxford Direct Services website. Each piece of content took into consideration the end users requirements / search intent as well as the integration of semantically relevant terms to maximise organic potential.
Content was based on competitor analysis as well as Oxford Direct Services coverage. Using competitor analysis as well as thorough keyword research, we were able to produce content for the end user that also offered good organic ranking potential.
For each service, Assertive worked on local search optimisation to increase organic coverage and Google map coverage. The purpose was to increase prominence for Oxford Direct Services in generic & location specific searches covering everything from MOT’s near me through to commercial recycling Oxford.
What the Client Says