Merger & Acquisition Services
SEO, Site Strategy, Design and Development, Application IntegrationCustomer Background
New York, New York based Merger & Acquisition Services Inc. (M&A) was incorporated in 1999 with the goal of providing merger and acquisition advice and services to companies within the insurance sector. Since its founding, the firm has grown into a boutique investment bank and has worked with more than 500 insurance companies and agencies throughout the world.
The Challenge
In the winter of 2008, M&A approached Ziv Gil, Digital Assembly Line's creative director, with the prospect of redesigning their website. Ziv had developed M&A's original website along with the company's brand identity and logo. Since their 1999 founding, M&A had grown considerably, opening regional offices in Hartford, CT and Atlanta, GA. The services required to meet their customers' demands had expanded, and the current site no longer met those demands. Furthermore, M&A's principals felt that the original site no longer portrayed the image of a fast growing successful financial firm.
When M&A approached Ziv, they made it clear that they wanted to protect the image of a company that had been operating for 10 plus years, without losing their brand identity, as it had become a recognizable symbol of their success. The new site strategy also called for the incorporation of several strategic applications, including a content management system (CMS), a newsletter sign-up that incorporated the addresses into an e-mail distribution list, and the ability for their clients to sign onto the site in a secure environment so that they might access files, applications and classified information specific to their accounts.
In addition, M&A leadership knew that search engines had become a critical marketing element and were pertinent in attracting new clients that might be looking for the services that M&A provides. They asked the Digital Assembly Line development team to make certain that a search engine strategy was built into the overall website design strategy. In reponse, Digital Assembly Line programmers performed the following when reworking the M&A site design:
- Created search engine-friendly website design templates for the new site design so search engines could easily access all of the content on the pages.
- Converted all relevant printed materials into a format more suited to web viewing. Graphic images and company logos were formatted for the web, and text was rewritten for better search engine visibility.
- Website design reformatted to accommodate a wider variety of web browsers.
M&A's site redesign was developed to accommodate its principals' application requirements and support advanced features of search engines and web browsers. The new site was launched in the spring of 2009.