Interpers

The Brief

After the stakeholder interviews, I wrote a project brief to keep everyone on the same page. The goals were:

• More reach and traffic
• Show a clear overview of the services and the process

The challenge here was that the startup is offering several solutions to the labor shortage and all solutions follow a different process and have different advantages. The website should create trust and encourage HR managers to reach out to the startup so that any questions could be clarified in a follow-up conversation.

Analyzing & Comparing

I started by conducting an audit of the current website. In the audit, I looked at usability, SEO, performance, security and the overall design.

Some of the key issues were:

• Long page loading time
• No SEO strategy (no XML-sitemap, no meta descriptions, no tools for analytics, ...)
• No favicon
• Texts too long and hard to skim
• Texts too general
• No clear call to action

Afterwards, I researched direct and indirect competitors and examined strengths and weaknesses of their respective websites. Among others, I looked at how competitors present the information and which strategies they use to build trust with prospective customers.

Branding Strategy

After gathering inspiration, I reviewed the current style and branding. While the startup was following some guidelines I noticed that these were not based on a strategy or brand identity. Therefore, I conducted a branding exercise to help us understand the message they wanted to convey.

In the exercise, we identified the following values:

• Uncomplicated
• Young
• International
• Experts
• Strong moral values

Following this exercise, I updated the branding guidelines. While I didn't change the logo nor the main colors, I replaced the font "Noto Sans Serif" with the serif font "Domine" for headers to show sophistication. I also simplified the color palette, excluding the pastel orange that was used as image an overlays and as a background color.

Mockups

Due to time pressure, we decided to only design the main pages of the website. The previous website included a page called "Downloads" where visitors could download an information leaflet. For a better user experience, we removed this section and decided on four main pages:

• Start page
• Services (divided into two subpages)
• About us
• Contact

I started by sketching out different version of the welcome page. The previous start page didn't have a call to action and the hero section felt cluttered because the text was overlaying the face of the person on the hero image. Therefore, I replaced the background image with a header, short text and button on the left and a new stock photo on the right. The redesign includes more text but also a clear call to action.

I included a section with references on the start page and a section with previous clients and partners on the About page to create trust. I also collaborated with the founder of the startup to refine the texts and present their services in a format that would be detailed but still easy to skim.

Developing

The previous website was using the open source CMS Contao, which was cumbersome to customize and update. Therefore, I decided to develop the new version of the website with Webflow.

Visit the live website here.

Key Takeaways

In this project, I learned a lot about how to structure content to make it easily digestible. I also realized how important it is to have a strategy before starting to sketch out solutions. Especially in this case, the competitive analysis and branding exercise allowed me to gather inspiration and find a clear individual style for the redesign.

While an iterative design process might not be necessary for a simple static website it is important to measure key metrics. Therefore, it's important to monitor the analytics and adapt accordingly to optimize the website for higher conversions.

After finishing the initial version of the website in March 2020, I was approached again by Interpers in May to reflect a change in services and attract new clients.