MainStreet

After months of work and thoughtful planning, MainStreet, a financial company that helps startups take advantage of R&D tax credits, was eager to implement a powerful brand redesign. However, two things were stopping them: a Content Management System that would let their marketing team effectively spin up marketing campaigns , and a partner with the sophistication and expertise to implement it. 

To bring the new design vision to life, the San Jose, California-based company chose to make the switch to WordPress VIP. MainStreet partnered with Happy Cog to swiftly transition from its previous CMS, HubSpot, and take its rebrand plan from concept to reality.

Quickly pivot to a new web host and fully realized rebrand

A critical part of MainStreet’s rebrand plan was to ensure its website and product offering were unified through a robust marketing-driven content strategy. However, MainStreet’s legacy platform presented a roadblock due to its unwieldy functionality and the fact that most of the company’s marketing staff were unfamiliar with how to use it.

Realizing the rebrand’s full potential meant MainStreet needed more of its employees to be able to create and post content and resources across its site autonomously. 

At the recommendation of WordPress VIP, MainStreet reached out to Happy Cog to jumpstart the project. 

Implement a fresh design on a powerful platform

MainStreet had a hard deadline for getting off its previous platform before it auto-renewed for another year-long subscription. To meet the deadline without taking MainStreet.com offline, Happy Cog quickly set up a static-frontend website to temporarily power MainStreet.com while the company transitioned to WordPress VIP. 

The temporary static site saved MainStreet from accumulating potentially hefty fees, had they needed to renew the older CMS’s subscription. It also gave Happy Cog and MainStreet time to iterate on MainStreet’s redesign using a separate, temporary testing site. The teams used the testing site to work collaboratively on prioritizing content for the launch of the new MainStreet.com. Running on a planned two-phase release of the new site over a short two-week period, Happy Cog built out content modules and page plugins for MainStreet’s immediate and long-term use.  

The site’s new functionality included:

• The ability to tag and categorize content in a taxonomy, rather than simply post it chronologically.
• Enhanced search features that enable MainStreet customers to find the exact content they need.
• Multiple types of lead capture forms that integrate with Salesforce to filter ideal prospects’ information directly to MainStreet’s sales team.
• A Happy Cog-led implementation of WordPress’s advanced Gutenberg editing experience with multiple custom modules, which allows the MainStreet team to easily build rich content-filled pages with a flexible block-editing experience.

By switching to WordPress VIP, MainStreet also had the advantage of better site performance and load time to make the most of the improved functionality. While the infrastructure of its previous platform required users to download large amounts of styles and JavaScript before pages loaded — slowing down their experience — Happy Cog’s focus on front-end performance, combined with WordPress VIP’s multiple caching functions, led to a huge boost in site speed and a strong conversion lift.

As for carrying out the new design, Happy Cog built out the necessary front-end code and implemented it directly into WordPress VIP, and guided the MainStreet team through launch day (and beyond). According to Garcia, the extensive WordPress VIP experience of Happy Cog’s developers meant they frequently suggested best practices that enabled MainStreet to meet its ambitious deadlines efficiently. 

Thanks to weekly meetings, a shared spreadsheet, and an open Slack channel between MainStreet and Happy Cog, “communication always felt immediate,” Garcia adds. 

An easy-to-use CMS primed for lead generation and strategic growth

Thanks to MainStreet’s newfound ability to publish content and improved taxonomy control, visitors to its popular Resources section have a much better experience and more easily find what they’re looking for. Additionally, the taxonomy allows for further refining by subject matter, ranging across topics such as payroll, remote work, venture capital, and many more. It’s all part of MainStreet’s plan to continue building a more strategic site.

Additionally, now that the company has more control over how its website looks and functions, the marketing team can focus on implementing initiatives such as improved search engine optimization (SEO), more targeted messaging, and better lead capture. 

Formerly, if users wanted more information on MainStreet’s offerings, they were prompted to send an email. Then, a MainStreet sales team member had to collect, qualify, and manually respond to the lead. Now, the forms automatically filter out prospects who do not meet MainStreet’s customer profile and responses are automated and integrate with the CRM.

Further, with the migration to WordPress VIP, MainStreet’s team now has the control and capability to expand and customize its website as needed. “We want to continue to make the content easier to scan, easier to find, easier for customers to orient themselves on what’s happening,” says Garcia. “With the foundation Happy Cog built, we feel we have the resources to continue making our content more robust with a lot more features. We’re taking the tools that Happy Cog built and going from there.”