Aspen is a leading global insurance and re-insurance company but its website, Aspen.co, was considerably out of date and needed a complete overhaul in order to reflect the evolution of Aspen’s brand.
Challenge
The new site needed to represent a powerful new online presence and comprise of a global website, separate insurance and re-insurance websites, a dedicated risk management site, a gallery website to showcase Aspen’s impressive art collection, and an iPhone app. To stand above the competition in a fierce industry, the new site had to be engaging and dynamic in order to attract new business as well as retaining Aspen’s existing clients.
http://www.aspen.co/Insurance/
http://www.aspen.co/Reinsurance/
http://www.aspenriskmanagement.co.uk/
Aspen’s ambitious brief had two key objectives:
1. To develop a rich brand experience online and make the Aspen brand stand out
2. To encourage increased user engagement and to establish and nurture new relationships
Solution
Working with full-service marketing agency True Digital , they evaluated a number of CMS solutions and selected EPiServer as the new platform best suited to deliver Aspen’s global sites.
EPiServer’s enterprise .Net CMS provides a multi-site infrastructure across a load balanced environment to underpin Aspen’s main website, business line websites and portal for external services tailored for clients. The solution was also implemented on Aspen’s art collection website.
Aspen opted for EPiServer’s CMS version 6 with workgroup functionality to allow access to all of the websites through a single portal. It was important that the system was able to be scalable and had the flexibility to grow as requirements of the business change.
“Using EPiServer CMS solutions has enabled Aspen to support multiple sites on one platform and delivered an exceptionally dynamic infrastructure. We’re very proud of the results we’ve been able to deliver for Aspen.”
Lindsey Richardson, Account Director, True Digital
Usability
The EPiServer system has great usability, and has provided a relatively small marketing team with the freedom to manage global sites through a single, easy to use and intuitive CMS system.
The EPiServer CMS solution also has a range of advanced features allowing the Aspen marketing team to quickly make changes and update content on the website; react to customer concerns; engage with visitors; and to measure the growth of visitors on a daily basis.
Content
The marketing team is able to quickly update content, add new pages, update news and change creative and assets in a few simple steps across the range of websites within the Aspen brand.
Using EPiServer ensures that the site is regularly updated with the latest content in the easiest possible way, and Aspen can create content once and then simply publish it in multiple places, in different layouts and across sites. EPiServer also enables True Digital to mirror content between the QA and live environment, and the system can also deliver real-time content direct to the Aspen Essential iPhone app.
Use of the workflow features in EPiServer CMS allows Aspen to spread the task of content creation and editing internally, while retaining responsibility for sign off and publishing with the core team. Aspen sites are also extensively integrated with third party and internal systems to share data and ensure constancy of data and user experience across the business and its clients.
Back-end functionality
EPiServer’s CMS also provides the Aspen site with RDF tagging and SEO optimisation capabilities. Global content, document libraries and asset repositories make for simple management, whilst site visitors have the benefit of improved search capabilities within the site. The system also supports HTML5 video.
Premium brand experience
Working with EPiServer, True Digital has created a website that reinforces and strengthens the new Aspen brand, meeting and exceeding all the business and user requirements. Since the launch, the volume of visitors to the site has increased by 15%, with the number of pages visited having doubled and reducing the bounce rate by almost 20%.
Utilising EPiServer’s functionality has helped to make the new site more engaging, delivering a dynamic and adaptable customer experience. It has also helped establish the Aspen brand against key competitors, now standing out in a crowded market place and delivering improvements in conversion rates which have lead to a significant increase in revenue.
“We wanted to completely overhaul our main website as well as the intranet and our satellite sites, which was a big task. Using the EPiServer platform, True Digital has delivered impressive results; multiple sites that are easy to manage and maintain and an online brand identity that really set us apart from the competition. The increase in traffic and conversions really speak for themselves.”
Richard Mavers, Digital Marketing Manager at Aspen
What does the future hold?
EPiServer offers many solutions for online customer engagement to explore and while Aspen is the process of updating its mobile app it is also interested in creating a mobile version of the site. Multilingual site management is also an enhancement currently being explored that will future-proof against any change in marketing strategy.