Acentech’s marketing team, Clockwise from left: Sandy Kane, Maylin Pavletic, Sarah McGillicuddy, and Viviane Benchaya
Cambridge, MA– Acentech was recently honored with a 2016 Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) Boston Award. Despite facing challenging competition from more than eight firms, Acentech received the first place honor in the website category for its newly branded website (www.acentech.com).
Acentech’s existing site was outdated and no longer accurately reflected its reputation as an innovative and technologically driven firm. In a world where showing, not just telling, is key to gaining the trust of clients, Acentech knew that it needed to revamp its website with a focus on client education, ease of navigation, excellent visual design, interactivity and engagement. Acentech’s marketing team wanted to highlight three main factors that have driven the success of the firm: its people, their expertise, and the highly technical consulting work they do in a way that was easily communicated to a diverse audience.
Acentech’s marketing team researched compelling websites within and outside the design industry to access best practices, and utilized client- and employee-focused surveys to hone in on their expectations of Acentech as a company, and therefore, as a website. The goal of the new website was to create an educationally-rich resource tool that profiled the firm’s projects and thought leadership abilities as well as celebrated the people who make it all possible. Acentech’s new website features creative and engaging videos, an active and educational staff-authored blog, personal employee profiles, and access to all social media platforms. Acentech worked closely with Richmond, VA-based website design and development firm Circle S Studio in the execution of this award-winning site.
“Modern websites need to meet current – and predict future – client expectations, and our goal was to communicate the complex services we provide in a relatable way to people who hire us, work with us, and learn from us,” said Sarah McGillicuddy, director of marketing and business development at Acentech. “We wanted to provide more than a self-promotional online brochure to visitors. We ultimately wanted to create a site the Acentech community could be proud of, that could educate and help our clients, and give prospective partners, employees, and clients a sense of, why Acentech?”
The website award category recognizes an external website or mobile site that promotes a firm or has been launched by a firm for a specific project. The judges found Acentech’s new website to have a “very sophisticated design that really connects with the architecture community overall.” [The website’s] “fantastic people pages” made the judges feel “like they really got to know them.”
Acentech also received tremendous positive feedback from clients who commented that the “new site is beyond fantastic! The graphics, the colors, it’s so easy to navigate…love the life and spirit of the pages.” The website’s analytics have already shown a 53 percent increase in site visits and 58 percent increase in users. Website-generated project leads have increased by approximately 20 percent, of which 50 percent translates to billable work. These new clients include a high-end hotel in a major east coast city, a developer of a TED Talk platform, and a high-tech sportswear company.
In 2015, Acentech was honored with two SMPS Boston Awards, the first place award for brand identity and the People’s Choice award for its innovative holiday piece.
