The problem
The current website was unfriendly and out of date, there was no story, no clear value proposition and the message was vague. The UI was also quite unfriendly. It wasn’t the representation of a Fintech company, this was creating a blocker as our potential clients didn’t find it engaging and eye catching enough.
Before having a brand defined, I was given the task to design a website in 3 days. No brief was given and clearly the expectation was unrealistic.
The objective
Was to attract users such as the Hedge Fund Managers, Investors and Corporations. Provide them a clear message the benefits of our products and services to their business. To build trust, make an impact and awareness that we were the only
Digital platform for the Hedge fund market and more importantly connect and do business with us.
The Process
Research
The current website was unfriendly and out of date, there was no story, no clear value proposition and the message was vague. The UI was also quite unfriendly. It wasn’t the representation of a Fintech company, this was creating a blocker as our potential clients didn’t find it engaging and eye catching enough.
Before having a brand defined, I was given the task to design a website in 3 days. No brief was given and clearly the expectation was unrealistic.
The objective
Was to attract users such as the Hedge Fund Managers, Investors and Corporations. Provide them a clear message the benefits of our products and services to their business. To build trust, make an impact and awareness that we were the only
Digital platform for the Hedge fund market and more importantly connect and do business with us.
Define audience
Identify our users was perhaps the easiest part as this was already defined, however there was a slightly confusion as on the product audience target as anyone could access any product description but still the message was not clear.
Activity: Identify personas, interviews to current users.
Results: We identified a list of emotions our potential customers shared such as frustration, hard work, time and effort to manage, cost.
Product Definition
In order to define information architecture and send a clear message to our audience about our services and products it was necessary to first identify the users needs and map them against the products.
Activity: Teams (Sales/marketing, product, Tech, Support) workshop, brainstorming, product roadmap, user feedback and call interview.
Website structure
User journeys
This was an interesting phase, I worked closely with the Sales team as well as the Tech team to understand what, why and how people were asked to do certain things such as registration, login, I also wanted to know what material was available such a media. What trends, patterns and lastly and more important what do users want to see. so we looked at what was needed to be hosted externally and internally.
During this process I reinforced the thought, I was not only building the website but an experience from the moment the user interacts with us at any level.
Content and IA
Since we have niche product in an conservative industry we had a lot of trust to gain from our customers, users liked the idea of our product and services once pitched, they saw the benefits to their business and solution to their pinpoints, we are in the time of digitisation this was the way to go forward, however since we are new to out audience and given the way our mind works, so wired and settled, we needed to tell a story, putting the user as our hero and acknowledging we understood all their frustrations the transition of moving towards digitisation and closing with the benefits to his business and the new him / her.
Activity: Research, Workshops
After looking a at different many sources one caught my attention on How to tell a story and used as a point of reference and began to plan the story as follows:
Results:
- Set a clear message to audience
- Build trust
- Plant ideas in the user mind of what else possible they can see doing by using our products and services
Personas: Fund managers / investors / Corporate
Emotions: Success, ease, control, trust, confidence, identity
Story
- Set message to audience
- Display customers logos
- Share testimonials, let them know the benefits through real customers
- The solution - Product’s features
Close statement - CTA = Request a demo / contact us
Footer: Site Structure
With the above in mind, I then presented it to the rest of the team and get them working on the content while I focused on next, the User Interface.
User interface
Having learnt all the above I thought this phase would be much easier, It was important to make the journeys short, easy and simple. I looked for inspiration on layouts, styles and quickly did some sketches and wireframes.
Activity: Research, wireframing, feedback loop, build
Three options were presented to the team on the feedback loop session as expected more changes were suggested and also began to collect all the pieces together.
It was decided that Marketing should own the website and free the Tech team from distraction. I suggested and volunteered to build the website on a easy website platform Wix. I took me a week to create the website.
It was a step ahead for Edgefolio and the rest of the products.