About Taylor Wimpey

Taylor Wimpey is one of the UK’s largest residential housing developers and a FTSE 250 company, constructing over 15,000 new homes annually. Their core service is building new homes for a broad audience, including first-time buyers and seasoned homeowners. They partnered with us from 2011 to enhance their digital presence and customer experience.
 

The challenge

Taylor Wimpey approached us with the need to revamp their digital presence. Their primary interest was in website design and website development. The existing digital landscape presented several challenges: poor user engagement, lack of engaging content, and significant 'findability' issues due to inadequate SEO configuration. They aimed to improve user journeys, making them seamless and stress-free, thus enhancing overall customer satisfaction and engagement.

Our solution

Our collaboration with Taylor Wimpey began with a comprehensive discovery phase, uncovering insights into the rational and emotional aspects of house buying. This involved a full schedule of interviews, workshops and research with internal and external stakeholders, which resulted in a blueprint for the new digital estate that addressed Taylor Wimpey’s challenges.

From these insights, we created an engagement strategy, with content strategy as a core element, and subsequent content design which fed into organisational wide taxonomy and site experience design.

A hi-fi, fully navigable prototype of the platform allowed us to live test with end users and refine using an alpha approach, perfecting pre-launch elements including usability, design, content presentation, accessibility, multi device compatibility and optimisation for search engines (SEO).

We then developed a fresh, responsive website built on Sitecore with a refined design for optimised user journeys. The result was a user-controlled front end, capable of providing consistent user experiences across multiple devices and clear user journeys.

The new site featured localisation functionality, targeting individual user areas and regions, and a bespoke API to connect Taylor Wimpey’s COINS ERP, enabling a multi-directional data feed.

As part of our ongoing partnership, in 2016 we introduced an innovative Customer Portal designed to streamline the home-buying process. This bespoke portal, piloted in two regions, allowed customers to manage the selection and purchase of their homes, providing a more personalised and efficient experience.

Key considerations
 

Security

The pilot Customer Portal handles a large amount of personal data, from financial details to personal addresses. Security was a top priority and the use of SSL protected data and TDE encryption ensured no vulnerabilities.

Managed Services

The size of Taylor Wimpey’s audience meant 24/7/365 website support service was needed. Our dedicated Managed Services team ensure stability and security, as well as reactivity to incidents on all days of the year.

Customised Integrations

We ensured the integration with major property platforms like Rightmove and Zoopla to enhance the data quality and breadth on the website.