Research

Audience

We began by focusing on our audience, having already reevaluated our brand strategy and completed much of the groundwork for our new users. The website redesign provided the ideal platform to stress-test our strategies and storytelling to date.

We also looked further out at inspirational and best-in-practice websites. We gleaned opportunities and insights on where we could push the envelope in our industry. Aside our competitor research, we brought ourselves into the mix, looking at our own failures and learnings over the last few years.

Design

Rebrand

We wanted to strongly tether our visual identity to our renewed pillars without loosing ourselves. In other words, don't drift too far from our current brand or our core values when reinterpreting them. A tricky balance! This led to 3 key changes:

1. Brighter, cleaner colors

We brought forward our brighter brand colours. The focused pops of colour invoked feelings of a clean-cut, simple brand and with an approachable, friendly product.

2. Gradients

The introduction of gradients spoke to our superior technology pillar. They represented the refinement, experience and confidence in our product.

3. New brand illustrations

Finally, we crafted a fresh set of brand illustrations. Many styles and iterations were explored and assessed. We settled on a borderless, flat style contrasting against vibrant colour gradients. This highlighted the interplay between complexity and simplicity.

Wires

We jumped into wires with the objective of a high conversion, tight ‘free sign up’ funnel. We were also keen to recycle where possible both in layout and in UI. This would help reduce dev time.

Early wires, represented the latter of this approach as we got bogged down, trying to resolve old website problems. But with iterations and feedback we were encouraged to break free from these limitations and embrace our new opportunities.

Build

The major challenge in the build stage were in communicating the tremendous value of the Archistar platform in a small amount of time. Without succinct execution, all our research and strategy could be undone.

We streamlined our copywriting and introduced animation where possible, to visually demonstrate our value, simply and quickly. These feature/benefit animations were simplified versions of their in-platform counterparts to keep the viewers moving through the funnel.

To Do's

Of course, no digital product is ever fully done. Here is what’s on our post-launch to do list:

1. Asset Optimisation

Some of our pages are at “peak capacity” as far as page load time. Some of our heavier animations could be optimised, analysed and or even replaced with light images. Also under consideration is animating select illustrations to increase attention to key areas.

2. A/B Testing

In our copywriting iterations we had multiple takes that were get cut. Of course none are “rejected” per se but are instead thrown onto the “We’ll A/B test it” pile. Many of these takes deserve validation.

3 Expanding the rebrand

Many of the back pages that are outside of the primary funnel need to updated with new visuals.

4. Pricing page

Our pricing structure is long and arguable too complex. Are their opportunities to help visitors compare plans in a more visual way?