Leeds digital agency Ayko has consolidated the online estate of UKFT, the trade association for the fashion and textile industries, merging its two main WordPress sites into a single Webflow platform.
UKFT, which represents fashion and textile businesses to government and runs the UKFT Futures talent programme, has built up its online presence over the years, but managing six separate WordPress sites had become slow, costly, and left the in-house marketing team reliant on agency support for routine updates.
Ayko led the migration, merging UKFT’s two largest sites, ukft.org and its UKFT Futures careers platform, into one unified domain. The project involved rebuilding the site’s information architecture from scratch, rather than a straight like-for-like transfer, so that members, prospective members and early-career professionals could each find relevant content faster.
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UKFT’s remit spans representing the industry to government, supporting members with international trade, driving sustainability initiatives, and connecting new talent to the sector through UKFT Futures, meaning a slow or fragmented digital presence could have knock-on effects across all of those functions, not just the marketing team’s workload.
A key challenge was protecting years of search engine visibility during the switch. Every page and URL was individually mapped and redirected to avoid the traffic drop-offs that often follow a website migration, which is a particular risk for an organisation reliant on organic search to reach its industry audience.
Tara Hounslea, director of communications at UKFT, said: “Working with Ayko on our new website launch was a genuinely positive experience from start to finish. We’re delighted with the final result and grateful for the team’s dedication, expertise and commitment to helping us launch the new site.”
UKFT’s marketing team has also been trained to manage the new site independently, ending its reliance on agency support for day-to-day content updates such as news, events and member resources.
UKFT is the UK’s largest network for the fashion and textile industry, acting as its leading trade association and Sector Skills Body. Ayko is a digital agency specialising in website design, development and complex platform migrations, working with membership organisations and businesses to build digital platforms that scale with them.
