"I needed someone who had the agility to respond and could bring the expertise we wanted both across the technical implementation and from a design and a creative perspective. We also wanted to work with a partner for the long term who would continue to build and develop our website over phases.

One of the challenges was pulling multiple organisations and domains together under one brand and ensuring the content looked and sounded like Harbor Global.

Phase one was to take the new visual identity as a brand system and help evolve it in its different usages, specifically in its online form. Alongside the brand evolution was the digital presence and website development that represented the broader offering of the portfolio of Harbor, positioning it in the market. As thought leaders in the legal tech space, Harbor wanted to create a community site, where clients had access to a broad and deep range of expert resources and information that covered a wide range of services.

After scoping the initial project, The Cohorts started work on a robust project plan that delivered to an immoveable deadline, whilst being flexible enough to work concurrently alongside a brand that was still being developed by a client on the other side of the world - essentially working back to front to most projects.

We began by implementing the CMS, identifying the data structures required to support the content, and building it all out before handing it over to the client progressively and iteratively so their dedicated team could load all the content they needed to review and migrate from multiple sites. Once complete, we were planning wireframes and front-end designs once we had received the finalised logo and branding to build out templates and bring the site to life on the front end.

With over 300 pieces of content available, Kaye wanted to ensure clients could easily access the specific resources they needed. So, we developed a unique 3-tiered question process, applying filters to deliver relevant content to the user. A 'behind the scenes' ranking table was also used against the articles to make resonating content more visible on the site.

Multiple efficiencies built into the structure of the CMS create a pleasant, easy, robust system to deliver a good experience for our clients that doesn't require vast HTML knowledge while reducing their maintenance and production overheads moving forward. Part of our monthly maintenance and report is to review what's working and what's not so we can triage any issues and identify commonalities and requests, in some cases building new functionality into the back end that gives the client more control.

From the client's perspective, Kaye feels brand cohesion has been one of the most outstanding achievements. “For a new company launch, it's been a really successful amalgamation of six different organisations into Harbor. I think we succeeded in keeping the messaging with the visual identity, with the assets we built out and the online presence - there's a perfect sense of the whole. I’m very happy with what we created and how we evolved Harbor branding to create a sense of proposition and promise to markets, clients, and partners.”

With all the challenges involved, Kaye knew a good partnership was vital for the project, and the latest collaboration is yet another success story. "The Cohorts were the right people for the job. I knew from experience that they would deliver. It was way beyond technical excellence; I took that as a given; it was all about the experience of working with them and knowing that they felt as committed to the deadline as I did. I needed to know someone had my back, and I felt with Reuben and the Cohorts team, I could rely on them absolutely to help me deliver".