BCO – WEBSITE
Ultimate membership engagement tool
The British Council for Offices is the leading forum for the UK’s office sector. Through discussion, research and innovation, BCO members shape the workplace of the future. We have redesigned and built a ground-up membership engagement platform including the website and bespoke CRM.
Challenge
The old BCO website failed to reflect the organisation’s brand or industry position – modern, progressive industry leaders and go-to resource for the entire sector. The site was tired, lacked dynamic content and was difficult to both navigate for the user and populate for the author (both in terms of the site CMS and the restrictive site management).
Technical issues included slow content population, poor content management, organisation and outdated styling on its .net platform, which also lacked effective mobile responsiveness.
The BCO’s 4500 membership needs constant management, the old CRM was inefficient, difficult to access and manage and limited in scope for marketing and promotional aspects.
For the project to succeed, the membership needed to be considered throughout the process, with input and feedback from a wide representative board with differing needs and opinions – our development approach from the outset had to first establish parameters, scope and structure to satisfy the client and members’ requirements, wishes and demands, without the project becoming a design by committee exercise. Avoiding the camel as far as possible….
Ultimately this would become a year-long (plus) delivery to fit to the client’s programme, content provision and availability, as well as a multi-phased development.
Solution
The new BCO website must better present its proposition, reflecting its brand and positioning to engage the public, non-members, and members. It needs a dynamic, contemporary visual identity, rich imagery and an evolved brand identity to convey BCO’s positioning as the industry resource and event leader.
The site must prioritise the UX (User Experience), with a considered content structure and user journey – where possible reducing the vast volumes of existing content, especially content which is no longer relevant or even accessed.
A flexible, user-friendly CMS will allow the BCO team to curate, manage, edit, update and populate content, news, and events easily, directly and without third-party reliance.
A new integrated Members Area will be built into the CMS, offering events booking and access to a clean, modern Research Portal (also integrated, replacing a third-party platform). The portal will feature new functionality for efficient uploading, searching, downloading, and archiving, and will index content for easier member access.
A brand new bespoke CRM system will be designed and integrated without service interruption.
Result
Whilst the new website retains a comprehensive amount of content, the new siloed and enhanced organisation allows for a more efficient and logical user journey. Its contemporary styling and layout better reflects the organisation’s ambitions, brand and membership services aims and objectives.
The BCO’s extensive research resources and events calendar is now easily accessible, enhanced and fully digitised with a supporting bespoke and integrated CRM, providing comprehensive marketing tools and capabilities.
The fully flexible and user-friendly content management system we designed, enables the BCO team to easily update and edit the entire site. The design and build of the site, as well as detailed user behaviour analytics means that we can easily evolve and refine the site, content, functionality and membership usability across further phases of development.
"A vast undertaking, including reorganisation of content, functionality and behaviours was just one part of this comprehensive project. A complete ground up design and build alongside a bespoke CRM integration, whilst still ensuring BAU without any business interruption over a long programme of development, was a big challenge for the entire client/agency team. This first ‘vast’ phase delivery was an incredible achievement, producing a new website which underpins the brand and its industry positioning.
An exemplary effort from the team here at OB, as always, solid, insightful and responsive to challenges along the journey, readying itself for the next phase in development…"
Julian Atkins – Director, OB Brand Consulting
"This was a complex, in-depth project requiring detailed research and planning. The original website was cluttered, hard to navigate, and failed to reflect the brand’s professionalism. Built on an outdated platform, it also created challenges for content management and suffered from poor speed and responsiveness.
As industry leaders, the new site needed a modern, dynamic visual identity. Inspired by the refreshed brand, we introduced a clean, image-rich design with intuitive navigation, bold colours, and striking imagery to better engage members and wider audiences.
The result is a complete transformation – a sleek, responsive platform with effortless navigation and improved functionality. It now delivers a cohesive, user-friendly experience and serves as a future-ready hub that strengthens engagement and elevates the brand."
Debbie Gossington – Consultant Design Lead, OB Brand Consulting
"This project was a game of two halves. After surveying the client stakeholders and end-users we began to get a picture of what was working and what wasn't. We needed to investigate and rationalise what already existed and build a wireframe that regrouped the content around end user defined content headers, to better enable navigation of the multiple sections and user groups.
There was a resistance to streamlining the content, so we had to find ways to keep archive material accessible to those who may need it, but also highlight new content streams. We were then asked to integrate a CRM system into the mix. This system was to be a bespoke ground-up reworking of the entire membership database. This included integrating a custom event and publication purchasing interface alongside a very complicated membership structure and portal. This could have derailed many website projects, as it was a huge ask at an advanced stage of the web design/build process, with a client team who were very busy with BAU responsibilities, but we rose to the challenge and delivered the site with only a small (agreed) delay.
We are now in the test and learn phase, where we are monitoring the site analytics, with the aim of reviewing and streamlining the content to make the site as optimised as possible."
Vanessa Marchant – Creative Lead, OB Brand Consulting
OUR PARTNERS
© 2025 OB Consultancy Ltd.