Covent
Garden

The clientanchor

Covent Garden is one of London's most recognisable public spaces. A world-class shopping and dining destination, which attracts food-lovers and fashionistas alike.

Following a five-year renovation, it opened in 1980 as Europe's first speciality shopping centre. It now offers a range of fashion, beauty and lifestyle stores. Making it one of London's hottest shopping regions.

Covent Garden London is Capital and Counties flagship property asset.

The challengeanchor

Covent Garden wanted to modernise their online offering, so needed a platform where they could build a stronger, more identifiable brand,as well as a space to showcase their tenants.

The project had limited editorial resources, with only one part-time content editor, so to ensure timely completion, we prioritised maximising the editor's efficiency.

The solutionanchor

Building the brand was a key element of the Covent Garden platform and designing it with a look and feel that matched their high-end tenants was another important consideration. To do this, we partnered with an external brand agency and together we modernised Covent Garden's online identity. Ensuring the end result was unique and would resonate with their target market.

Getting the work done quickly was another key factor whilst remaining mindful of the modest editorial resources. So we planned an incremental approach,choosing to migrate the site in stages from Drupal 7 to 8.

We began by releasing our new Drupal 8 homepage onto the live site, while the rest of the content continued on the original Drupal 7 setup. Our team then built new brand listing pages on Drupal 8 before retiring the old Drupal 7 pages. We continued with this approach across the whole site until eventually fully retiring the old Drupal 7 site.

This incremental approach proved a success, allowing us to spread the improvement of the site across a longer period of time. New pages were able to go live in weeks rather than months, and consequently retention rates increased significantly. It also meant we didn't overwhelm the Covent Garden editorial team.

The end result is a site that has helped to create and cement a new brand for Covent Garden. The editorial team now have maximised efficiency and freedom, and the site has needed minimal development since its release.

Retention rates on the platform have also improved over time. Seeing a greater exposure both for Covent Garden and their tenants