Client Spotlight with Helen Walters on Craft CMS

In this Q&A, we talk with Helen Walters, Head of Marketing, who we recently worked with to design and build a website using Craft CMS. We get her insights on the process, collaboration, and outcome, and Helen shares her experience working with our team and the benefits of using Craft CMS.

Whether you're considering a new website or want to learn more about what it's like to work with Abstrakt, this candid conversation offers valuable takeaways to help you make an informed decision.

How would you describe your overall experience working with our team?

This is the sixth website I’ve delivered over 12 years so I’ve had lots of experience with digital agencies, including working in one for 4 years, and can honestly say this has been the best experience out of all of them.

From the outset, it was a true collaborative partnership from my early conversations with Lauren Swarbrick that were open and honest, to the handover to Nikki Taylor who would be PMing the project.

The team at Abstrakt are flexible and worked with us to find solutions, even going the extra mile when they didn’t have to. I found everyone at Abstrakt personable, approachable and very knowledgeable. Shout out in particular to Lauren Irwin, who could convey SEO knowledge in a way that was digestible for the non-marketers in the website project team.

Was there anything specific in our flow (workshop/UX/SXO/digital branding/SEO etc) that you found particularly useful?

Definitely the planning stage and the SEO strategy - both presented in a way that could be easily followed and referred back to. Particularly liked how the sitemap was handled and our copywriter found this handy too!

Did anything in particular stand out to you? Either because it exceeded expectations or didn’t quite hit the mark?

As a woman working in marketing and tech, the difference in working with a female-led digital agency team was palpable. It felt more collaborative, empathetic and like a warm hug! Visiting the Abstrakt office was always welcoming and friendly, and had all the good vibes that a close-knit, genuinely inclusive working environment has.

In terms of the website, a standout for me was your approach to a page builder template of the components that would be available to us on our site. As a content manager, it is just brilliant because you’ve always got a reference point and visual of every component in the CMS, which I’ve never had on any of the other sites I’ve delivered. It’s worth its weight in gold!

Did you feel that our team understood your needs and provided solutions that aligned with your business objectives?

On the whole, yes! But I’d say that as Craft sites are built around content and our content was non-existent and had to be created from scratch, the content population timeline was unrealistic for us with the amount of we needed to create and the deadline we had discussed.

Did the final product meet your vision?

The frontend is beautifully designed and the backend is a dream to use - it’s the perfect website for me. It more than delivered on the investment.

Is there anything we could have done better to add more value or support you and your team more fully?

No. You’ve been incredibly patient and understanding throughout the project and any bumps in the road.

What initially led you to choose Craft for your website? Was it recommended to you, did you have prior experience with it or did Abstrakt introduce it to you?

I used Craft as a CMS back in 2017 and then delivered a new Craft site in 2020 and, for me, it’s the best CMS on the market. Here’s why:

• Licensed, fully supported, stable and secure – updates are installed at the click of a button

• Craft developers build rather than manipulate off-the-shelf boilerplates – so you get a fully bespoke and scalable site tailored to your audience

• It’s design and content-led – you don’t get shoe-horned into a template that doesn’t work for your business, your users or Google

• The site is built with components which means your in-house marketing team can build their own pages – no extra development costs!

• Future-proofs your biggest digital asset – technology and marketing move at speed and Craft offers the scalability/flexibility that will match the pace of a high-growth business

• You get what you pay for – investing wisely now means we won’t be re-designing and rebuilding in a few years’ time at significant extra cost

• The authoring experience is second to none – content admin is flexible and easy, includes a preview page before publishing, can schedule publishing in the future, etc

• You don’t need loads of plugins (and therefore more cost, more updates, more security breaches, bad optimisation, etc.) – it does most of what you want straight out of the box

• Allows for unlimited integrations, e.g., CRM and ATS integrations that we might use in the future to automate certain workflows

• Craft is very SEO-friendly – fast page-load speeds, metadata and image optimisation, easy for users and web crawlers to navigate

How has your experience with Craft been so far? Have your expectations been met? In what ways has it exceeded or fallen short?

The last Craft site I managed was on Craft 3 and the site Abstrakt has built is Craft 5. I’ve noticed some great new features, e.g. being able to organise the asset tray through folders.

How does Craft compare to other content management platforms you have used?

I’ve used WordPress and HubSpot but find Craft quicker and easier. It’s also a training-friendly site. In other words, when training colleagues how to use it, it’s a logical system to use and easy to grasp.