Background
Dixon Mitchell is an independent, Canadian, employee-owned investment counsel group based in Vancouver. They reached out to us in the fall of 2021 because, although they liked the look and feel of their original website, they encountered ongoing difficulties with usability and navigation and they needed our help to fix those and to add new content to the site.
About DM
Providing a focused investment management approach, Dixon Mitchell is an independent and women-led investment counsel. They pride themselves in taking a client-centred approach to understand varying investment objectives and constraints in order to protect capital and generate stable returns.
Dixon Mitchell is not your typical finance firm. They look past the dollar signs by committing to corporate citizenship and wealth stewardship with a focus on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) demands of our ever-changing world. For over two decades, Dixon Mitchell has provided transparent services while focusing on the long-term and immediate goals of their clients. Given all this, we were excited to work with them to augment and redevelop their website.
Website Redevelopment Goals
At Out-Smarts we take the time to understand the specific needs of our individual clients and we always start our process by fully identifying and outlining client goals. Dixon Mitchell’s main goals were to keep the look and feel of their current site while improving visitor experience and simplifying usability on the back end. They also wanted to add new content and pages.
Their site was initially built on Webflow, however, this platform made it difficult for their team to make any changes without help from their web developers. This made simple tasks such as uploading documents and making content changes much more difficult than they needed to be.
Strengthening calls to action on the site to effectively capture leads while considering the demographic of their mature audience was another goal. Therefore, increasing useability and easy navigation was a priority.
Process
To understand the scope of the necessary work, we conducted a discovery and audited the site to identify how much traffic each page was getting. To maintain SEO (search engine optimization) we audited backlinks to see how many external sites linked back to their page.
We also met with the team and stakeholders and learned about needs through client interviews. This revealed what needed to be done and we devised a plan.
First, we determined that additional pages were needed on their site to optimize visitor experience. We revised the home, team and careers pages, created and designed new pages for media, insights and careers and enhanced the menu and navigation. To convey their values more clearly, we also created new pages for their ESG initiatives.
To address their issues around website updates, we used WordPress to custom-develop and optimize their site for all platforms and devices. Creating modules for specific items allowed the team at Dixon Mitchell to easily update these components. Furthermore, adding the functionality of dynamic components, particularly dynamic text and images.
To improve call to action (CTA) and increase conversions on their site, we added an email newsletter, integrated with Mailchimp, creating custom functionality for return visitors.
Why we liked working with them
As a women-led investment firm in a male-dominated industry, we were excited at the prospect of working with Janine, Jessica, and the team there. When we learned more about their philanthropic work with First Nations and their ESG initiatives that sealed the deal for us. The project went really smoothly and the Dixon Mitchell team were a pleasure to work with. They are professional and respectful, and their clear communication helped move the project along. They even went so far as to send flowers when one of our team was unwell. We’re looking forward to supporting them with the site and other initiatives in the future.
A word from the client
Out-Smarts were fantastic to work with; our project was a little different, given that we needed to recreate an already-designed site on a new platform. Mhairi and her team have helped us to produce a much easier and time efficient system for us to effectively position ourselves to continue the growth of the business and engage our online audience. They listened closely to our needs and also offered dependable recommendations. We look forward to continuing to work with the Out-Smarts team and would highly recommend them to anyone needing digital marketing or web services.