A top-20 UK accountancy firm had completed three mergers in two years. Each acquisition brought a separate website, a separate brand identity, and a separate content management system. The result was four websites that looked nothing like each other, with overlapping service descriptions, inconsistent messaging, and no unified digital strategy.
The firm's CMO had a mandate from the board: create a single digital presence that reflected the combined firm's scale and ambition, without losing the local relationships that each legacy firm had built.
"We had four websites saying four different things about what was supposed to be one firm. Clients were confused. Our own people were confused. The consolidation gave us a single platform that actually represents who we are now, not who we used to be."
We ran a 14-day assessment across all four sites. The audit uncovered over 2,400 pages of content, of which only around 600 were still relevant or accurate. We also identified significant SEO risk: the legacy domains carried combined authority that would be lost without careful migration planning.
The consolidation was delivered across three sprints. The first sprint focused on information architecture and content strategy - mapping every service, sector, and office location into a single structure that preserved local relevance while presenting a unified firm. The second sprint built the platform on Payload CMS with multi-author workflows, compliance-ready approval chains, and localised content for each office. The third sprint executed the migration: 301 redirects for every legacy URL, content consolidation, and a phased cutover that kept all four sites live until the unified platform was ready.
Organic traffic across the combined entity increased by 52% within four months of launch, driven by the consolidated domain authority and improved content quality. The firm also saw a 35% increase in graduate applications - the careers section had been rebuilt with a focus on the firm's culture and progression, replacing the generic listings from the legacy sites.
CMS support tickets dropped by 70%. The marketing team went from managing four separate platforms (two of which required developer involvement for basic updates) to a single system that anyone in the team could use.
