It wasn’t so long ago that the nation watched three would-be prime ministers taking their final televised test in the Great Hall at the University of Birmingham – but you may not know that the University has also hosted the Antiques Roadshow and countless weddings, reunions, conferences, concerts, banquets, awards ceremonies and exhibitions.

www.venuebirmingham.com is the University’s new Conference and Events website. 

IE has been working with the University of Birmingham for nearly a decade. We won the tender to design and build a sector-leading, marketing-focused, CMS driven website built around visitor tasks back in mid-February and the site went live bang on schedule – 12 weeks later.

The University commissioned a clean, easy to navigate site with intelligent search and easy feature comparison that would measurably drive up online and offline bookings. Content is structured beneath the titles meet, celebrate, sleep and eat in Birmingham. It had to be flexible and easy to update in-house with social media built into the fabric of the site.

In great IE tradition the goals of the site were clearly identified before we began:

• Three months from launch 10% of all bookings must come directly through the site
• Six months from launch the site must have returned its investment to the business.

Google Analytics and online dashboards must provide hard evidence for both the above.

And along the way IE picked up a swathe of exhibition graphics and print collateral to support the launch. Everything from pop-up exhibition stands to venue templates and press adverts.

So we’re obviously happy – but what did the client think?

“Here at the University of Birmingham we are absolutely delighted with the site that IE have created for us. We selected IE because all the services we needed would be under one roof; initial information architecture and site requirements, consulting, design, coding and online marketing consultancy. We knew it would be beneficial to have all of the specialists in one organisation, and we were proved right when our very tight deadline was met and the site went live exactly as per schedule. These are the people that you want working on your site!” 

James Robertson, Web Marketing Manager, University of Birmingham