Our Work

Case Study: Square Meal

If you work in London’s Square Mile then you’ve probably heard of, read or regularly use SquareMeal.co.uk. With almost 3500 restaurants and 1500 venues reviewed plus details on upcoming events and gastronomic news the site has a reputation as the City’s (and increasingly the UK’s) premier corporate entertainment resource.

Launched back in the golden summer of 2000, the website’s reputation is well deserved; its searchable and friendly delivery of reliable restaurant and venue reviews, guidance on finding venues that meet gastronomic, emotive, geographic or other key criteria and dishing up news on the latest openings and events have ensured strong brand adherence in a increasingly competitive marketplace.

Working alongside a mass circulation magazine and a new trade show, the website closes the circle in ensuring content and brand delivery to the highly valuable audience of corporate entertainment organisers.

We continue to work with Monomax (the publishers) to evolve the website, enhance the customer experience and provide the administrative tools for effectively managing the whole shebang. The website is driven by a custom content management system built on a PHP/PostgreSQL platform which enables administrators to manage the site editorial, track Helpline enquiries, deploy ads and monitor site performance.

All restaurant and venue reviews are provided by Square Meal appointed independent reviewers. Additional details such as virtual tours, audio/visual galleries, map links and real-time booking help visitors choose the best restaurant/venue for their needs. If a visitor can’t find a suitable venue then they can request assistance from Square Meal’s Helpline team using the online request and tracking system built by us.

Central to the success of Square Meal is enabling visitors to quickly and easily find a venue or restaurant that meets their needs. To meet this obligation we created a quick search system to compliment the advanced search and selections features of the site. Throughout the site the new quicksearch bar allows users to find a venue or restaurant by postcode to provide pinpoint accuracy or by landmark, town or train station alongside the more obvious venue or restaurant name (all with predictive text). To help customers easily visualise their search results we’ve integrated Google mapping (via their API) to display the results within a customer defined area.

A key role Squaremeal.co.uk provides is in providing performance feedback to corporate event venues that advertise in the offline annual guide. Through the administrative interface, Monomax have access to detailed individual venue performance criteria including; number/nature of Helpline enquiries, number of venue website click thrus’, appearances on searches etc. This level reporting enables Square Meal to show a real, measurable return on investment to their clients.

Traffic to Squaremeal.co.uk continues to grow strongly with user sessions increasing by around 5-10% per month. To meet this traffic growth demand we continue to evolve the site’s structure to optimise it’s performance and up-time.

Although Square Meal is a well recognised brand in the City of London, a strategic aim is to significantly raise its regional profile through search engine rankings. To achieve this whilst maintaining the site’s integrity we worked with a specialist SEO consultancy to conduct a site review and from the joint recommendations we implemented a number of upgrades to both the interface and content management system. The improvements have had a dramatic affect with traffic from Google growing in excess of 30% per month.

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