McBains A property and construction consultancy — architects, engineers and project managers under one roof.
- Client
- McBains
- Sector
- Construction
- Services
- UX/UI design, Information Architecture, Craft CMS, Multisite
- Website
- mcbains.co.uk
Search impressions up
306%
Impression on trust up
175%
Credentials content up
1,104%
240 years, a strong brand... but the site wasn't flowing
McBains is a property and construction consultancy with more than 250 staff working across architecture, engineering, cost consultancy, project management and sustainability. Their projects run from local retrofits to regeneration schemes worth over £200m, with 240 years of history behind them.
The previous site launched alongside the change of name from McBains Cooper to McBains. And with almost all search traffic arrived on the name itself, it worked well to establish the new brand.
But the disciplines and sectors McBains actually specialise in were performing less well.
Clients described the site as covering the basics without much depth.
Their brand was known but their expertise that helped build it it wasn't shown.
Clients and candidates wanted the same things
We start projects with a discovery phase. For McBains that included staff and client surveys, interviews with leadership and early-career staff, competitor benchmarking and a full analytics review.
Prospective clients and prospective employees turned out to want the same three things from the site. The projects, the expertise behind them, and the people doing the work.
This finding shaped everything after it, because it meant one set of pages could serve both audiences instead of two sections competing for the same content. Candidates who want to go further move into a Pinpoint careers hub built to match the McBains brand.
Emma Browne
We wanted to make the site feel simpler without making the business feel smaller. Bringing sectors, services and credentials into one clear structure made it easier for people to find what they need, and the search results show that clarity is paying off
Each service page stands alone
Having architecture, engineering and cost consultancy under one roof is a strength for McBains, but leading with it risks losing the client who came looking for just a structural engineer and nothing else.
We made it so every service page stands on its own terms, and the integration story is helped by a graphic device that gives each discipline a shape and then shows them joined them with pathways.
We built them a generator so they can create new connected pathway graphics in-house, allowing variety without having to come back to us each time.
Four layers become one
The biggest change was that we worked to collapse four levels of navigation into a single structure, with sectors and services standing as equals rather than one nested inside the other.
This corrected the problem where their search visibility was concentrated almost entirely in the brand pages and their credentials content sat several clicks from the homepage.
Impressions across the sector and service pages are up 306% and clicks up 175%. Impressions on the trust and credentials content, previously buried, are up 1,104%.
One backend, two countries
McBains Greece used to run on a separate CMS. It now sits alongside the UK site as a true Craft multisite in English and Greek, with AI translation built into the control panel so Greek content is produced in-house rather than sent out to a manual and expensive translation service.
Publishing without a developer
Modular content blocks replaced fixed templates, so the McBains team build new pages themselves. Greek content is written and translated inside the CMS. New versions of the pathways graphic come out of the generator rather than a design request. Careers runs through Pinpoint, feeding the site directly.
Monthly reviews, tools built in
We've carried on with McBains since launch on Mutual One support. This means monthly site reviews, a developer on call every working day, our suite of B2B marketing tools, and a clear roadmap for what comes next.
“Thank you so much for all of your hard work. The site looks incredible and the feedback, having soft launched to staff, has been really positive.
It's been a pleasure working with you all and we're really proud of the site and you couldn't have made the experience any easier or more enjoyable.”
