Ethidex Website and Communications Design
Ethidex is a Canadian software development and consulting company, helping financial and insurance organizations manage risk and ensure compliance with federal regulations and guidelines. A successful and active company, Ethidex had expanded their services and was an active participant in industry events but hadn’t updated their website or communications templates for several years. They wanted to ensure they continued to maintain a professional image in an increasingly competitive environment.
Discover & Devise
The project began with a discovery phase to learn more about the company’s services, products and customers and to confirm and prioritize business objectives. Aalto Interactive composed a questionnaire to distribute to project stakeholders, and facilitated a group discussion to confirm and expand on responses. In addition a competitive analysis was conducted to glean ideas.
Marketing strategy: The discovery phase highlighted that marketing messages needed to be re-vamped to clearly convey key competitive advantages to new business prospects. User profile questions were posed to project stakeholders followed up with a group discussion to clarify company positioning, brand values and creative preferences.
Content strategy: Aalto Interactive reviewed existing website and data sheet content and provided recommendations of how existing content could be streamlined and re-structured to more efficiently communicate key information. The website and marketing materials would be designed to allow staff to efficiently and economically make updates in future.
Website information architecture: The site map was re-organized to enable prospects to quickly locate content targeted to their own industry segment, and a section was added to highlight the company’s key competitive advantages. Site navigation was re-designed with intuitive, streamlined menus.
Design & Develop
The branding theme was re-vamped to project an image of the company as an approachable, service-oriented, trusted advisor. A new design theme featured a softened colour scheme, rounded corners, subtle linen texture and a personable serif font to support the brand image.
The new website was designed to support the brand theme and invites users to contact Ethidex with any questions via a prominently placed call to action grouped with social media links. The home page was designed to highlight key benefits via a carousel and testimonials. A Twitter feed and moderated industry news feed tool (leveraging Yahoo Pipes) were implemented to keep content fresh with minimal effort from staff.
After analyzing different content management system options, Aalto Interactive recommended that the new website be implemented with Concrete 5 due to its’ reliability and ease of use. Documentation and training were provided, and the clients were given the opportunity to contribute to the content population process.
Communications design: New trade show banners and product data sheets were designed to support Ethidex’ active participation in industry events across Canada. Simple, eye-catching vertical banners were designed with red colour-blocking and a prominently placed logo to make the banners easily visible across the trade show floor.
The data sheet content was re-structured to clearly present readers with product information using a needs, solution, benefits approach. The new layout segmented content areas to make the content easy to scan through and digest. Working with the client, a diagram was created to convey the Ethidex compliance workflow at a glance. The data sheet was delivered as an Adobe InDesign template to allow staff to economically generate new data sheets in-house.
Results delivered
“Aalto Interactive has been the cornerstone of our visual branding and application development program. They not only provide clean, modern and attractive print and web design but also support us with sound advice on user experience for our flagship web application. We rely on their expertise and judgment.”
- Michael Deck, Managing Director, Ethidex