Softcat.
Transforming their website into a lead generation tool
Softcat has had great success in recent years and has seen 25 years of continuous growth in sales, but as they operate in a competitive market, they have had to adapt and utilise digital to take them to the next level.
They searched for an agency that would challenge them and drive them to transform their current site into a lead generation tool to help gain an advantage in their market.

Challenges
Presenting a complex offering
The Softcat offering on the surface is simple; IT infrastructure products and services for businesses (SMBs & enterprise) and the public sector.
But what this could mean for businesses in detail is complex, and the possibilities for customers are almost endless, particularly when factoring in everything available through Softcat partner networks.
Communicating the Softcat differentiators
The people of Softcat and the customer service are what set them apart in the industry. Finding the right balance between the cultural representation and solutions and services detail is key.
Assisting the sales team
Sales are currently driven primarily by outbound sales, and the website and supporting information are not integral to the process. This includes resources, data and customer insights. Finding the right place for digital within the sales team is important as it needs to be useful and assist sales and not be seen as a blocker or hindrance.



Digital strategy
Our strategy team needed to embed themselves into the Softcat culture by conducting workshops and stakeholder interviews. Based on the findings, we recommended some key principles essential for the project's success. We used these principles as a guide as we progressed with the strategy.
It was clear that multiple stakeholders and differing opinions on service weighting resulted in confusing user journeys. Softcat had a complex offering; it needed to become simple & engaging whilst remaining customer-centric.
To help them achieve this goal, we set out five core focus areas that we needed to implement:
- Simplify the user journeys
- Provide more insights & data
- Introduce to sales at all key points
- Design a visually-engaging site
- Provide a helpful and useful channel for customers
After unpacking these focus areas, we defined this is as how we would approach it:
- Sales orientated User Experience
- Simplified journeys and reduced number of pages
- Integrated resources, news & insights
- Overhauled service/solution pages with refined copy
- Conversational Marketing tool for assisting leads on their journey
- CRM integration for new enquiries
- Triggered events for database building
- SEO strategy
- Improved data & insights


Creative
Softcat's website had evolved over time, collating a mixture of visuals and styles- creating confusion and lacking clarity as a brand. After running in-depth discovery and proposition workshops, whilst exploring the brand and visual representation of Softcat, we created some visuals to reflect their new bold and exciting direction accurately.
The creative use of shapes, established from the logo and lines, helped distinguish an impactful and vibrant connection unique to Softcat. The goal was to lean towards untraditional creative within the industry, making them stand out from the other 'IT' sites.
A refreshed colour palette and modernised font combined to reflect their brand directions, culture and styles. Whilst the fully responsive design and friendly, welcoming images encouraged more browsing and engagement on the site.
Technical build
Similarly to the creative, the website has been layered with different technologies over time. This was a great opportunity to strip this back and make sure it’s scalable for the future, leaving the legacy systems behind. Here are some of the additions we made to help the sales and marketing team leverage digital:
- The build's main plan was to lay the foundations for a strong platform for acquisition, so captured leads by the site are sent through to Infor CRM (SalesLogix) to streamline Softcat’s current sales processes.
- Beyond the CRM, we added marketing tools such as Drift and Sleeknote to help customers at specific parts of their journeys. Wistia was also introduced and integrated through an API, allowing us to add lead capture and content linking within the video players.
- Before, Softcat had to lean on development agencies to create bespoke landing pages for their campaigns, and they sit as stand-alone pages introduced to the site on an ad-hoc basis. Not only did this add to the already challenging technical setup, but it also was a big blocker for the marketing team. We leveraged the flexibility and in-context editing power of Concrete5, coupled with Cloudfront for performance and added security, and delivered a fully administrable, lightning-quick content management solution.
- We also went that one step further to provide the marketing team with complete flexibility on the visuals and the content by creating an extensive style guide for broader customisation within the CMS blocks around the brand assets and colour themes. Now there is freedom to spin up unique landing pages without the external cost, but even more creative freedom.

The results
The initial results are a good indicator of the quality of traffic and engagement levels, compared to the previous website.
13.5%
Increase in goal conversion rate
41.3%
Increase in avg. session time
187%
Increase in website leads
Digital Marketing Manager SoftcatThe Rawnet team brought energy, creativity and a results focused approach that helped us to streamline our online offering and create a customer-centric experience that generates quality leads. As a result, we now have a site that strengthens our market position, delivers value to the business and will continue to grow and adapt as our marketing evolves.