A growing business
Applepips Day Nursery was first established in 2014 and has become a trusted childcare provider among its local community. In 2024 it had the opportunity to grow and add a new location to its existing services. To reflect this expansion and better serve local families, Applepips decided to revamp its website and update its branding slightly to accommodate the addition of a new location. This case study explores the process of developing two new logos, as well as a website design that is user-friendly, informative, and visually appealing. Branding Update Before we could begin working on the new look for the website we first needed to come up with a design for the logos that each location would use. These logos would need to follow the same style as the original, utilising the red and the green featured in the original logo. It was decided to go for the simple design of including the name of the location underneath “Applepips Day Nursery” as this made them easily identifiable. Another option could have included changing the colour of the hand for each location but this could cause multiple accessibility issues. Below you can see the original logo alongside the updated logos for the locations. Website RefreshThe Applepips Day Nursery had not been refreshed for a decade, so underwent a significant refresh to modernise its design. The primary goal was to create a more user-friendly, informative, and visually appealing experience that reflected the nursery’s expansion to two locations. A major change was the removal of purple, the original prominent colour. This was replaced with a light blue, creating a fresher and more contemporary aesthetic. To improve navigation, several existing pages were combined. This streamlined the site, making it easier for visitors to find information. Two new pages were added to the website. These pages provide detailed information about each location, including the services offered and the teams working at each nursery. SEO and AccessibilityWe also carried out extensive organic SEO practices to ensure that the new Applepips Day Nursery website could be found on all search engines. This included the use of keywords and the inclusion of Alt text on all of the images that were used. From an accessibility standpoint this is one of the most important additions as it allows screen readers to describe what is going on in the images. The website can also be navigated completely using a keyboard which is an excellent feature of the website builder that we use. This helps the website to comply with the new European Accessibility Act which is coming into effect later in 2025. Another important accessibility feature we included is the Ally plugin that allows users to change many aspects of the website to fit their needs. The refresh aimed to bring the website up to date, reflecting the growth of Applepips Day Nursery and providing a more intuitive and accessible experience for users. Client FeedbackThroughout this project we worked closely with the nursery manager, Tracy Shrubb to develop a site that not only worked for the parents but also for the members of staff at Applepips. This is what Tracy had to say about the development process, “Constructive Marketing made it easy for us to achieve our website aims and were very patient and understanding that our day to day jobs took precedence sometimes too! We now have a website that shows off both settings and the parents can easily navigate. We are really pleased.” Click the button below to take a look at the new Applepips Day Nursery Website. If you want to find out how Constructive Marketing can help you refresh your website get in touch by emailing us at web@constructivemarketing.co.uk or give us a call on 01903 686858
A New Website For Woodstock Day Nursery
When we were first approached by Woodstock Day Nursery, they were unhappy with several aspects of their incumbent website. The design looked increasingly out of date and the site was difficult for staff to update. Woodstock Day Nursery asked us to redesign their website to give it a modern look and to make it more appealing to parents. One of the most important things for Woodstock (aside from having a great website of course!) was to have a site that was easy to use from both the front and back ends.. For this website, we used WordPress which is a simple and easy to use content management system (CMS), it allows the client to make their own changes to the website if they wish to do so. We chose a theme that included a drag and drop front end page builder, meaning that it’s very easy for the client to pick up and edit if they want to make changes to the site themselves once it has launched. We started the project with a discovery meeting with Woodstock. This helped gain understanding of what they wanted to achieve from their new site. We then created a few initial design ideas for each of the pages on the website. These were then presented to the client for consideration and progression.. Once the overall design of the website (colours, font and layout) had been agreed we began development on the site. The client provided a selection of high quality relevant images, and we used them throughout the site, creating an eye-catching website that was new and fresh. Capturing the attention of any parents looking for the perfect nursery for their children. The information on the site was also fully updated and optimised for all major search engines. Once the website had been built, one of the last steps was to make sure that not only the content was optimised, but also the rest of the website was too. To make sure that it can be found organically on the internet. There were 2 main ways we did this, first we made sure that every image on the site had alt text. This is what search engines use to identify what an image contains – You can read more about ALT text in our blog post. The second way we optimised the website was by installing an SEO plugin on the website. This was used to ensure that each page on the website was using the correct keywords and the meta descriptions fitted each page they are describing, as well as a multitude of other requirements that boost the SEO score of the website. Using these combined methods we managed to increase the SEO score of the website by almost 20% before it had even launched. The end result of this project was that Woodstock had a brand new fully functional website that was easy to navigate on desktop and mobile devices. The website is also searchable on all search engines, thanks to the SEO plugin and ALT tagged images. Using these SEO techniques, the new website is more likely to be found when searching for children’s nurseries in the local area. Nursery owner, Anne Shrieves, said, “The new website is lovely and bright and so much easier to use than the old one. It really reflects the fun and laughter we share every day at Woodstock and it’s just what we wanted.”
Looking After Heaton House Care Home
Heaton House is a specialist dementia care home based in Worthing and we’re proud to have been retained as their outsourced marketing department for many years now. At first we worked to establish them in the local community as one of the leading dementia care homes in the area and now we work to maintain this reputation. As their outsourced marketing team, we work closely with the leadership team at Heaton House. Ongoing work includes; website updates, managing their social media channels and online presence, as well as looking after their brand and using it in design and print projects. This ensures their name stays well known in Worthing. It’s our job to ensure that their multi-channel marketing efforts are always seamless and work together to send out the same messages. We’re committed to continually evolve clients and make sure that they stay ahead of the marketing curve. As shown from the examples below, this rings true in the case of Heaton House. We pride ourselves on our ability to run seamless, multi-channel campaigns for them. The services we carry out for Heaton House include: Social Media To make sure that the social media channels got the results that Heaton House wanted, we developed a targeted social media strategy for them, ensuring we only put out high quality and relevant content. Our team creates engaging content for both LinkedIn and Twitter, making sure that the owner of Heaton House, Sally Neil-Smith, is always shown to be a leading local expert in dementia care. This type of content requires our team to educate themselves on dementia and we are all trained Dementia Friends as a result. The owner at Heaton House has a strong presence in the business community and so being active on LinkedIn has proved to be a great way to further the home’s presence within the local business community. Website Support As part of their website management, we also write longer pieces of content for their blog and make regular content changes to their website. Including adding new PDFs to download and updating information as and when it is needed. As a full-service marketing agency, we can create the content that we distribute too. Print Advertising Part of establishing Heaton House in the local community is making sure that they are always in front of the local people. An effective way to do this is to advertise in hyper-local publications and we take care of this for them. From booking the advertising with the publications to getting the ad designed and sent to the publication, we ensure Heaton House gets the local coverage it needs. We produce spreadsheet schedules of what publications are booked when and keep an archive of physical copies of the magazine to show Heaton House if they want to see it. Awards Not only have we been able to establish Heaton House as a local leader in intergenerational care, but we also achieved high commended for the lifetime achievement award for the owner – Sally Neil-Smith. Photography and Video We frequently go to Heaton House to take photos and videos for a variety of uses. The great thing about having such a diverse skillset at Constructive Marketing is that we can create and edit the footage we need for any number of marketing channels the client needs. PR As part of our role as Heaton House’s outsourced marketing team, we write press releases about significant events to get them featured in local and industry publications. We have also secured editorial space in multiple local publications that get delivered to thousands of homes across the Worthing area. Projects of Interest Heaton House recently had a visit from a theatre company and they wanted some photos taken and a video made to remember the day by. We attended the event and captured all the footage we needed. We were then able able to edit the photos and create an engaging video. The video was viewed over 285 times across their social media channels and received a great response; including being retweeted by an actor from the theatre production and the theatre company itself. With our PR expertise, we were able to publicise the event for Heaton House which included writing a press release about the event and sending it to local journalists and publishers. We have a great working relationship with most of the local publications and so we managed to get the press release published in a couple of the local publications.