Since its inception in December 2015, ANGUSalive, the culture, sport and leisure trust for the county of Angus, has offered residents and visitors a wealth of services and sought to inspire healthy, active and creative lifestyle choices.

The charitable trust focuses on five service areas which form the culture, sport and leisure offering. These include: libraries; museums, galleries and archives; sport and leisure; countryside adventure; and theatre and venues.

With a diverse portfolio of services and operating sites, having a clear and user-friendly ‘shop front’ is key to customer engagement. At the time ANGUSalive was established, however, the design and functionality of its website was limited. The trust wanted to build a clear, approachable, friendly brand that would attract and inspire customers, stakeholders, partners and employees.

Carol Petrie, principal officer at ANGUSalive, explains: “While the initial council microsite served us in terms of the first point of contact to our organisation and communicating information to our customers and prospects, it didn’t reflect our diversity, product specialisms or identify with the focus and image we wish to project.”

With aspirations to offer an excellent responsive customer service using digital platforms to promote its services, meet customer expectations and maximise organisational income and efficiency, ANGUSalive embarked on a search to find a new digital services provider.

Having already implemented Legend’s One System, One Solution management system in late 2017, when ANGUSalive saw a demonstration of Legend’s Umbraco CMS at the Legend Conference in October 2018, the solution presented itself.

“The seamless integration between Legend’s system and the LLS website offering was appealing,” says Petrie. “As a platform, Legend’s Umbraco CMS also ticked all of the other key boxes, from cost-effectiveness and security, through to speed of innovation and the ability to layer functionality as we wanted.”

Specifically, ANGUSalive wanted a shop window that would clearly and appealingly convey its brand image, moving away from one that was content-heavy, to one that was image-focused and could deliver a more attractive customer view of what the trust offers.

In addition, the trust sought to maximise the opportunity to have in-house control over digital offerings and be able to grow functionality over time.

Conception and Evolution
The project kicked off in November 2018 with a blank sheet, culminating with the Go Live in May 2019 of ANGUSalive’s newly-designed and constructed Legend Umbraco website, together with the launch of online class bookings. The project was delivered on time and within budget.

Legend Leisure Services worked closely alongside ANGUSalive and developed an easy-to-navigate website that reflected the five different Angus service elements.

“In phase one of the initiative, our priority was to get the new content, structure and branding right,” says Petrie. The seamless integration between Legend’s management system and the new website meant information such as class timetables only needed to be updated once centrally, removing duplication of effort from ANGUSalive staff.

“Initial feedback from both customers and our team has been amazing,” Petrie enthuses. “Previously, employees were reluctant – even embarrassed – to direct customer enquiries to the old website – it just didn’t feel like us.

“We were using social media in the absence of a proper destination, whereas the opposite is now true: online and social are properly integrated, employees know where to direct customers, it’s easy to explain where to find the information they’re looking for, although the site offers great search functionality, making it much quicker and easier to locate content – and it looks great!”

ANGUSalive and Legend are currently nearing the completion of phase two of the project, which is to add transactional elements, such as online joining. Future phases will include room and facility booking, swimming lessons and membership journeys.

“Our next objective is to lessen traffic to our reception desks and this change will be facilitated by online and self-service offerings,” says Iain Stevens, senior manager, business management and development at ANGUSalive. “In improving our digital offering, we’re giving our customers what they want, while also making ANGUSalive a great place to work, as our teams are able to add value to their jobs. It’s a win-win scenario.”

Living and Breathing
Key to bringing any community together is a sense of partnership. The same holds true for any initiative whose purpose it is to achieve that. One of the main factors in the success of ANGUSalive’s digital project has been the collaboration between Legend and the trust.

As Stevens concludes: “Legend is more than a provider, it’s a true partner and we feel valued. At every step of the way, the Legend team has sought to understand what we wanted and then helped us deliver and improve on that. As a result, we now have a digital presence that reflects us, our values, our community and our history, in addition to being delivered on time and within budget.”