This may be news to some, but The Shard is made of bricks! We’re not joking. Obviously not the whole building but the base and shopping mall of London’s tallest building is primarily made of brick.
Those bricks were supplied by one of the UK’s leading brick factors and suppliers, Modular Clay Products (MCP).
MCP’s old website was, to put it bluntly, poor. Some of its main flaws were that it wasn’t mobile friendly at all, could not be edited easily, wasn’t generating any leads and worst of all, their identity wasn’t befitting of a multi-million pound company. In all honesty, the logo wouldn’t have looked out of place on a white transit van.
We were introduced to MCP through one of their industry partners. These partners had convinced MCP that we were the web developers who could freshen their brand and deliver an SEO-driven website which would bring the company into the 21st Century. We felt that working with their existing brand identity wouldn’t be possible at all, so we approached the client and advised that now was the time to reinvent their brand (and potentially themselves). Had their brand identity stayed as it was, it simply wouldn’t deliver results that would be good enough, and would stick out for all the wrong reasons.
While drifting out of our comfort zone is vital for learning new things, we don’t consider ourselves brand specialists, but that doesn’t stop us from providing insight wherever we can. We brought our friends at Visual Dialogue into the fold, who could create a brand which would take MCP forward for years to come. We worked extensively with Visual Dialogue on the brand identity, ensuring it would work in both print media as well as on-screen.
As for us, we constructed wireframes for the new MCP website and designed a “Brick Finder” solution which proved beneficial in the long run. This “Brick Finder” even allowed the user to swap out any mortars for ones with different colours, including brown, red and grey.
The next step was extending the brick catalogue to include hi-res visualisation wraps that architects could download for their CAD drawings.
We extended the system further so that visitors could order brick samples online. Additionally, we continue to send the MCP sales team an alert which prompts them to give any potential client a follow-up call, so as to ensure the brick samples ordered are suitable for the task at hand.
We consistently drive traffic to the site through our deep keyword research and SEO solution, to ensure that MCP rank highly for their targeted, and converting keywords. Organic traffic is also driven by writing regular blogs, case studies and industry news, which also collectively enhance MCP as a knowledgeable and resourceful brand. Their brand is only going from strength to strength and the web traffic results are demonstrating that in spades, every year they remain with us.
