Role
Product Designer and Project Manager.
Team
I worked directly with the company stakeholders, the developer and the company’s marketing consultant throughout the project.
Overview
Website design for CIC Financial, a well known Christchurch company that offers insurance and financial services to both individuals and businesses.
Challenge
CIC Financial had an existing website that reflected the old branding and approach to business. I was tasked to completely redesign their website to highlight their new focus on specific services and their requirement to gather more leads and scheduled appointments through the site. The interface was also to reflect the new branding of the business.
Approach
Initially I conducted interviews with the business owners to gather their list of requirements and goals for the new website. A competitive analysis on both direct and indirect competitors was done to highlight any features of the site that may need to be added or focused on more. I researched further industry websites to get a knowledge of commonly used interface layouts.
This all helped in creating a list of key features for the CIC Financial site which I included in the initial rough sketches for the page layouts.
I designed a UI style sheet based on the new branding. Then using the approved rough sketch page layouts, I created mid fidelity, then high fidelity wireframes and tested via a clickable prototype on InVision.
Solution
My vision for the interface was to create a professional, modern yet friendly look, and of course reflect CIC’s branding. To help achieve a uniform look throughout the site and also on supporting marketing material, I designed a custom set of icons for all of their services.
To help the website achieve one of the main goals of increasing leads and scheduled appointments, a consistent look of solid light blue backgrounds were used throughout the site for the scheduling sections of pages. This would enable the user to become familiar with where they need to go on any page to schedule a time to meet.
For better user experience, free white papers have been made available for download on each service. This is to assist users and also reflect CIC’s desire to be in for the long run with customers and support them how they can. Not just being in for a quick sale. This was another requirement from the business owners.
Results
CIC Financial have kept their high ranking on google searches and are currently scheduling a majority of their new leads via the website. Being able to measure and assess how new sales progress from the site has been a game changer for the business owners.