Zweig Group’s new website combines three old websites into one for a seamless user experience.
By the time you read this article, Zweig Group will have a brand new website, one that combines our three previous websites (zweiggroup.com; thezweigletter.com; and our online store at shop.zweiggroup.com) into one, for a completely seamless user experience.
Have you checked out zweiggroup.com lately? If so, you are in for a treat! For the first time in almost a decade we have a completely new website. We’ve taken some of the traditional elements of the Zweig Group brand and modernized them, along with new graphics and layout. We wanted to make sure the site stood as being very “Zweig” but also showed that we’ve grown and changed. Although we’ve re-skinned our website before, this only hid some longstanding problems and issues behind fancy new clothes, but didn’t solve some of the fundamental issues and challenges we’ve had. This new site is not just a new look and feel – it’s also new on the back end!
Zweig Group does a lot of things – learning, advisory, awards, research-based products, and so much more. This is a lot to encompass in one platform. As we’ve evolved over time, we’ve gradually added new services and delivery methods, which meant more websites and more programs, software, and tools that have to work with these sites. What we ended up with before this project was a very complex technology spider web that was difficult to use, and also fragile on the back end. On the front end, we spent a lot of time updating things in multiple locations and also answering customer service questions that should have been easy to find on the site. We found that clients often didn’t know where to find research reports in our online store, or weren’t aware of our range of learning options.
These problems and many more are solved by our new site! Some fresh fonts, navigation, and updated copy and content better showcase the mission and capabilities of our firm. Most importantly, this new site helps our clients and potential clients learn about everything we do without having to leapfrog around to different websites. In the past, if someone read an article in The Zweig Letter then wanted to learn more about the Zweig Group staff member who wrote the article, they’d be taken to a completely different site. It was also hard to go from these articles to view the most current research report and learning options available on similar topics. Check out some new articles from The Zweig Letter at zweiggroup.com/blogs/news and see how much easier it is to find related information.
Behind what users can see when visiting the site are some important structural changes. A brand new site means we had the opportunity to make sure our website is fully integrated with our social media channels, marketing software, and various other programs we use to run the business.
Getting to this new site has been a journey, but of all the web projects we’ve undertaken over the years, it’s been one of the easiest – in large part due to the help of Concord Adams, our partner on this project, and the great team we have here at Zweig Group. Although “too many cooks can spoil the pot,” when you have a good project management technique, careful tracking, and excellent communication, “many hands make light work.”
Our work over this past year with Concord Adams underscored the importance of getting the right partner on these kinds of projects. Although we have some talented individuals on staff, it would not have been possible to pull off a project of this magnitude without the dedicated help of professionals who not only had more technical skills, but also were not likely to get distracted by their daily job functions and clients (sometimes it’s nice to be the client for a change). Working with a good web developer doesn’t necessarily mean hiring the biggest, fanciest company, but rather one that understands what your firm does, who your clients are, and will work tirelessly to ensure a good user experience on both sides of the screen – that means both the staff who will ultimately have to work with and update the website, and also the clients and future clients who will be viewing it. Concord Adams worked hand in hand with Zweig Group’s marketing team and set us up with a great project structure and just the right number of check-in meetings to keep the project on track.
If you’ve been delaying a new website for your firm, there’s never been a better time to get started. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to look around our new website at zweiggroup.com, and discover more about who Zweig Group is today!
Christina Zweig Niehues is Zweig Group’s director of research and e-commerce. She can be reached at czweig@zweiggroup.com.