case studies

james hay

James Hay, the established wealth management arm of the Santander Group, specialise in the provision of pension and investment services and products to investors and Financial Advisers. Their business is based on a reputation for excellence which has been built through a proven ability, for over 25 years, to meet the service needs of their clients, to whom they offer unrivalled technical and professional support.

the brief

In the past few years James Hay's unique status has been challenged by some of the major financial players who have begun to move further into the areas of specialist investment and pensions.  The challenge for LEWIS was to develop a new web presence to act as the lynchpin in a wider organisational move to provide a supreme level of communication and service to their valued client base and to attract investors from other areas of the market.

our idea

Online branding:
The brand platform of James Hay needed to be brought in line with the overall Abbey/Santander Group corporate image whilst retaining a clear element of exclusivity to reflect the unique nature of the James Hay offering.  LEWIS worked alongside the brand managers at James Hay and their offline agency on the corporate identity strategy and then translated this through to the website design, concentrating on the development of a professional, corporate style which would be appealing to clients whilst engaging the content of the site.

LEWIS were responsible for developing a strategy for the theory behind all online imagery, the structure and style of all digital mediums and aligning this to other platforms to ensure brand consistency across the board.

Structure and positioning:
At the outset of this project James Hay were conducting their online business over a number of platforms including multiple micro-sites, landing pages and online systems which did not tie together well, if at all.  The structure of the new site encompassed all of these elements in a coherent and user-friendly approach, providing James Hay customers with a single point of access for all of their wealth management business needs.   The phrase "everything at your fingertips" became an adage for the project at every stage of its conception and growth.

Accessibility and usability were major factors in the site development.  At each stage of the build LEWIS rigorously tested the site against industry standard guidelines and James Hay's own priorities to ensure that it exceeded expectations on all levels.

Functionality and client features
Due to tight internal infrastructure, the previous James Hay website(s) did not allow the marketing team to easily control content.  The procedure for updating the site was rather tedious, meaning that clients were rarely kept up to date with the latest news and information.  The Content Management System built and implemented by LEWIS as part of the overall web build now allows the team to update all content, add pages, documents, images and downloads as well as track user actions, roll back changes to a specified date and monitor website statistics.  This system has been a key driver of the customer service experience that James Hay now provide to their customers at all levels.

Features such as the Knowledgebase, which is lead by James Hay's expert Technical Support Unit, provide quality information and literature to clients from knowledge leaders in the field that cannot be found anywhere else.  The Knowledgebase is tied into James Hay's regular Tech Talk e-marketing initiative which distributes up-to-the-minute tax and pensions advice on a regular basis to those that are registered to the service.  Clients can sign up to this initiative or to receive James Hay literature through online forms on the site, which again, are managed through the CMS.

the outcome

The James Hay website has completely streamlined the operations of the marketing team and enhanced their potential to promote the business as a whole. It now operates as the central point for all James Hay's business activities and enables them to provide an exceptional online service to clients to equal that provided by other parts of the business.  With the launch of this website, James Hay set the standard for online delivery throughout the Santander group of companies.  Since then LEWIS have worked with one of James Hay's sister companies, Cater Allen, to develop their client facing website and have recently launched James Hay's new ‘advisercentre' resource, providing exclusive services for their most valued customers.

"LEWIS continue to impress with the recent launch of James Hay's new website and online brand awareness campaign. The agency's commitment to understanding our business, customers, and processes is reflected in the innovativeness of their creative ideas and solutions. They are a fantastic team to work with and their support and expertise is invaluable."

Arlene Crawford
Former Group Marketing Manager, Digital Communications
Abbey Wealth Management