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Burns Carlton Plc

This is a case study by CMG members 'Webevents'.

New web site design, development and integration increases the conversion rate of visitor to applicant by over 100% and places the company in line with the top performers in its sector.

About Burns Carlton

Burns Carlton is an established executive search and selection company, providing a service that their clients and candidates would describe as excellent. With offices in London and Leeds and classified as one of the largest recruitment advertisers in the country, Burns Carlton has an excellent reputation with candidates and companies alike.

What did they need?

Burns Carlton’s website was originally built when the company was established, and hadn’t developed as the company grew. Its lack of focus and functionality, combined with little or no online marketing campaigning meant that it was attracting very little good quality traffic, and almost none of the visitors converted to job applicants. In order to maintain their position as an important executive recruitment agency, and to match their offline presence and reputation, Burns Carlton needed a website that would act as a key online marketing tool, driving suitable candidates and companies to their door.

Why did they choose us?

After talking to many agencies and short-listing just three, Burns Carlton chose Webevents based on three critical criteria:

Online marketing skill
In-house development expertise
Cost control and realistic scheduling

What did we do?

The Burns Carlton website needed a full re-design, including the addition of complicated functionality to allow the website to be integrated with their own internal databases. Over a scheduled period of around 5 months, Webevents:

Re-designed the look and feel of the site.
Developed integration with internal databases to allow easy uploading of new jobs.
Incorporated a Job Alert, allowing nightly, relevant job updates to clients who register with the site.
Developed a microsite capability, to allow Burns Carlton to generate revenue by offering clients additional advertising on the site.
Simplified the registration process, allowing applicants to upload their CVs direct to the company.
Built in tracking which allows Burns Carlton to see where referrals are coming from, allowing them to focus their online marketing.
Wrote bespoke, optimised content to improve natural search engine rankings.
Handled a link-building campaign to improve natural search engine rankings.
Ran a pay-per-click campaign around the launch date to improve traffic.

What were the results?

Webevents scheduled the design and development of this project on a realistic and achievable timetable, giving Burns Carlton the confidence that the work wouldn’t be rushed to meet a deadline and that elements of the project could be adjusted as the project ran its course. Accordingly, the project ran smoothly and the team was able to respond to enquiries or amendments from the client.

In the first four months after the new Burns Carlton website went live, the number of quality CVs coming into the company increased substantially, with the number of visitors to the site who were converted to applicants running at around 5-6% - an increase of at least 100% from the previous website.

Additional tracking is improving the measurability of where the traffic is coming from and how the website is being used, to enable Burns Carlton to focus their future online marketing activity.

What happens now?

Burns Carlton is currently talking to Webevents about a further phase of development that will see the website become completely integrated with their own internal office systems. These developments, together with regular content and marketing updates, will help the website to reflect the company’s standing in the recruitment sector and attract more of the right visitors to the site.

What did they say?

Sean Dyson, IT Manager at Burns Carlton says, “Webevents is a professional, knowledgeable organisation that has added value to our business by strengthening our online brand and driving quality traffic to our new website. The team was a pleasure to work with and we enjoyed a constructive exchange of ideas, resulting in a site that competes easily with the country’s largest agencies.”

Allen Wrigglesworth, the company’s Operations Director added, “This was a project that we needed to undertake, as our online offering is pivotal to the future growth and development of our business. Webevents has helped us to achieve a professional website that does justice to our business, and which has received many compliments from our candidates and clients. Their costing, scheduling and communication has meant that this project exceeded our expectations.”