New website and customer portal for Sciontec
Industry: Property
Services delivered: Website development | Project management | Copywriting
A new digital presence for Sciontec
When I started working with Sciontec they were in need of a new website, they were expanding quickly, launching new developments and they had some brilliant ideas around a customer portal they needed to action.
Providing great spaces for great minds
Located in the heart of Liverpool’s innovation district, Knowledge Quarter (KQ) Liverpool, Sciontec operates and develops state-of-the-art lab, office and coworking facilities for science and technology businesses. They also provide support services to help businesses grow and thrive.
LSP offers three innovation centres and is home to 60 of Liverpool’s STEM businesses. The Spine, home to the Royal College of Physicians, is the base for Sciontec AI, the company’s all inclusive workspace. Whilst Hemisphere, a £56m landmark building at Paddington Village, will join the portfolio in 2025.
When they approached me, Sciontec did not have a website as the company had recently been formed as a joint venture between Bruntwood SciTech, Liverpool City Council, Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Liverpool. Having previously managed the development of websites, as well as extensive experience in the commercial property sector, the marketing team brought me onboard to take the lead in the delivery of the new site and portal.
Why SCIONTEC chose to work with me
“We needed someone who understood our sector, our business and how the requirements of our audience and customers translated into a website and customer portal. With commercial property sector experience and having worked in Liverpool, Emma got to grips with all our needs really quickly.”
Sally Bloor, Head of Marketing
A great fit
Having previously worked for Bruntwood, a large commercial property company in Manchester, I knew what Sciontec needed from a website and customer portal. I’d also worked in Liverpool for Bruntwood so I know the city and the important role destination marketing plays in attracting new businesses.
In my last role at Unify by Bruntwood, a spin-out facilities management business, as head of marketing I took the lead on managing and developing the new website for this business as well as Unify Energy. I played a hand-ons role in briefing our requirements to web developers and managing the delivery of the websites.
It was this knowledge in these two key areas that made me a great fit to work with the team at Sciontec on their website development and new customer portal.
Want to work with me?
My approach
I began with reviewing the existing LSP website and customer portal. What worked, what didn’t work and the content we wanted to migrate across such as news stories. A brief was then developed with the Sciontec marketing team on their requirements from the new website and portal. Some key functionality that had to be incorporated was integration into Salesforce for the website and online meeting room/parking booking as well as issuing an e-newsletter within the customer portal.
A shortlist of web developers were invited to submit proposals. Interviews were then held with the favoured supplier to ensure they understood the requirements and could deliver the project. We then began working on the architecture, wireframes and branding to ensure this was agreed ahead of the build. Simultaneously, I worked with the Sciontec marketing team to write the content and collate imagery and additional assets for the new site. During the build there were regular check-ins between the developers, myself and the Sciontec marketing team to ensure the project was on track.
“Emma took the hassle away from our team, managing the whole process from selecting a web developer to the build and testing. We were kept engaged throughout and she knew when to get us involved. She was really flexible with her time when we had to adapt to meet the demands on the project and her weekly visits to the office proved invaluable in working together to deliver the new website and portal. If the opportunity arises, I’d love to work with Emma again.”
Sally Bloor, Head Of Marketing
The detail
Testing was an important part of the project as we had to ensure desired functionality of the website and customer portal was working on both desktop, mobile and multiple browsers. This not only involved the marketing team but also the customer operation teams who would be the ones managing the customer portal day-to-day. I coordinated the testing, collated the feedback and managed the fixes with the developers.
The brief required that the website be SEO ready on launch to give us a headstart with Google. Activities included ensuring that the developers put the 301 redirects in place from the LSP site, metadata and H1 tags were completed and all internal links were working.
Training on the Wordpress CMS was delivered to the Sciontec marketing team by the web developers and I delivered the customer portal training to the customer operations team.
Go live required the migration of all the LSP customer data into the new Sciontec customer portal including any future meeting room/parking bookings. This was completed over a weekend to ensure minimal disruption to customers using the portal.
The Results
The new Sciontec website reflects the company’s brand and identity as well as providing them with a platform to showcase their properties, the workspace products and support services they offer to growing businesses. The site is flexible enough so as they add new properties to their portfolio and new products this can be done within the existing site.
The customer portal brings together customers from across all Sciontec’s properties creating a larger community of businesses rather than just being site specific. They can self-serve on their bookings, contact the customer operations team and the Sciontec team can notify them of news and upcoming events. It has the flexibility to let the team communicate to individual buildings and floors in case of any localised disruptions they need to be made aware of.
