ESco launches ninth content website for Dods Group

Article by Megan Walden

Sat 01 Aug 2020

ESco has just completed the final website in a suite of sites which were built over the last year for our client, Dods Group Ltd.

In the Spring of 2019, we started this project by building an initial content site which launched for Holyrood Magazine in September of that year. This was used to showcase our ability to build content sites and, due to the success of this proof of concept, we are now very pleased to announce the completion of our ninth site for Dods Group Ltd.

Across the nine sites, we have worked with our client’s briefs and ideas to include a mixture of articles, sponsored content, advertising and events. Working on these projects has not only been great fun for the team, but we’ve also been able to roll out some new functionality across the platform, including AI-powered search engines to locate specific articles.

The Dods Training website includes lots of exciting features such as the ability to register for free webinars or book open courses, a “Meet the Team” directory and a catalogue of accessible case studies which can be filtered by UK or International regions for easy navigation.

PoliticsHome is one of the most viewed and valued specialist online news providers in Parliament. Renowned as a source of the latest political thinking, PoliticsHome is a must-read for anyone who wants to know what’s happening in UK politics. With over 80% of traffic arriving on a mobile device, it was essential that the site was optimised for smaller screens. Our creative team paid careful attention to mobile menuing, touch target sizing, related content, font sizes, choices, colours and advertising placement to cater to these mobile users, ensuring an engaging and tailored experience.

The PoliticsHome website generates millions of page views per month and therefore required an experienced team to ensure it was optimised for success. Using a combination of careful database planning, efficient coding and caching, the use of a content delivery network and a programme of load testing, the new website is crucially fast-to-load and performant whilst receiving the huge volumes of traffic.

Holyrood Magazine’s website features the latest news from Scottish Parliament and politics as soon as users land on the homepage. The site boasts easy navigation of comment and analysis on hot topics in Scottish politics, interviews and features, the PPA award winning “Editors’ Column” and an event search engine which can narrow results by category, location, and date.

It has been a great pleasure to work with our client in showcasing our existing web solutions, as well as rolling out new services across nine brand new sites. We look forward to extending the boundaries of other content sites in future to help our client’s to reach their full web-user potential.

The team at ESco were fantastic throughout the project - from our initial concept meetings all the way through to launch. Their expertise and willingness to take on board our ideas made everything run as smoothly as possible and we are delighted with how the new site looks

Kevin Schofield, Editor of PoliticsHome