Berryman Glass Recycling is Britain’s largest purchaser and recycler of waste glass. Founded almost 90 years ago, they’re now looking forward, and meeting tomorrow’s challenges, both in terms of maintaining a technological lead, as well as carving out a presence for themselves on the new social web.
World class in glass recycling
It’s not as if Berryman have nothing to say about themselves, either — they are at the heart of a worldwide commitment to recycle waste materials, with glass being their speciality.
In addition to their respected presence in the glass recycling sector, they are prominent members of various bodies charged with furthering the recycling agenda, to both the public and businesses alike. As you can imagine, this wealth of knowledge and activity gives rise to information that readily lends itself to a web log (more commonly referred to as a blog).
However, the challenge was to produce a website that offered this information up in a format more reminiscent of industry news and not commentary (at least for now), which is more like what you’d expect from a blog. That aside, WordPress was a perfect solution to fulfil their needs and to allow them to manage their content.
Other challenges existed, such as building a flexible, dynamic and intuitive navigation system to enable swift movement through the website. Also, adding customized response forms to certain service web pages to allow visitors to make highly specific enquiries regarding those services.
All of these novel additions, as well as many more, were wrapped up in a clean and simple design, provided by Octane’s print design partner Wave Creative, who I worked closely with throughout the whole of the project.
Over the long-term, our involvement will evolve and adapt. Wave Creative and Octane will manage many of the peripheral activities (such as day-to-day maintenance), as well as planning and then implementing agreed strategies designed to encourage more customer and industry engagement via comments and the sharing of articles.
From a project management perspective, we planned out the various activities associated with a content managed website and assigned certain individuals to those activities, so that key personnel were charged with managing those activities.
The benefits of a content managed website
>Berryman have made an important first step towards socializing their website and offering a more direct means of communication with their customers:
- Ready for social media » vvisitors can easily share articles on social networks or via social media websites.
- Knowledge base » both prospective and existing customers have access to a wealth of knowledge that’s easy to find and share.
- Making contact » customers can now contact Berryman and make specific requests, outlining their needs in detail, quickly and easily.
What we achieved
- A comprehensive, yet simple approach
The challenge was two-fold: 1. make the client aware of the real value of their Organic Knowledge — those things we often take for granted and forget the value of over time, and 2. make full use of WordPress to help manage that accrued knowledge. - Building and maintaining awareness
Sometimes, the greatest challenges aren’t external, but internal; ensuring everyone at Berryman understands that they have a readily available resource, not only for their own use but also for their customers. - Anticipating the social web
In time, the Berryman website will open itself up further to social media and everyone will be ready for that moment, now that the pieces are in place and everyone understands the unique opportunity that represents, both as a means of engaging with customers more directly and as a chance of stealing a march on their competitors.
Conclusion
Berryman Glass Recycling are an existing client of Wave Creative, who created their corporate identity some years ago to flow across all media streams including advertising, fleet vehicle livery, exhibitions and more recently, their ‘World Class in Glass Recycling’ website. Octane’s involvement is to extend the scope of Wave Creative’s web marketing service offerings to Berryman.
Berryman now have a place on the web around which they can build various other activities, such as using their website as a point of entry for exhibition attendees to follow up a meeting with one of their team, or as a way of publicizing their activities and various recent business successes.
While it’s still early, over the next few months we’ll begin providing demonstrative evidence of the many benefits of this new website, and open more doors to more opportunities in the process.
To see for yourself what we’ve achieved, go to the Berryman Glass Recycling website. And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call or contact Octane today!