Propagating a New Brand and Growing a Sales Funnel
OVERVIEW
Agri-Access is a subsidiary of Compeer Financial that provides secondary financing for agriculture operations loans across the US. When Agri-Access came to Bader Rutter asking for a new website, we learned that their existing website was so clumsy and unintuitive—that sales reps avoided sending potential clients to it. In addition to the website, a brand refresh within our creative team was also taking place. The new website would be the first and most prominent public-facing iteration of the new branding.
MY ROLE
From discovery to deployment, I led the UX research, strategy, and UX design for the new Agri-Access website. Working directly with our Executive Digital Director, Senior Brand Strategist, Senior Developer, Content Strategist and Account Leads, as well as key stakeholders from Agri-Access, I was able to help the group align around the core user needs and the proposed solution.
OBJECTIVES + CONSIDERATIONS
Website needs to exude the new brand positioning and style elements.
Create an intuitive IA to support a content management system with clear parameters as the Agri-Access team will be maintaining and updating all content after launch. Site to be built using Wordpress.
The website must support the challenge of limited creative assets. (Aside from team photos, all digital assets would be stock.)
Consider and accommodate for upcoming marketing automation programs, to be launched as a phase 2 approach.
TIMELINE
Research and Discovery: 2 months
Definition and Design: 3-4 months
Development and QA: 1.5 months
STRATEGY
Through discovery, and understanding the customer journey, we learned that the best way to convert was to get potential clients to connect with a relationship manager (sales) as soon as possible. With this as our site goal, the team was able to align messaging to the new brand platform, refine website content to deliver clear objectives, and give the internal Agri-Access team a website they could finally use to support their sales efforts.
SITE GOAL
Enable lenders (potential clients) to get offline and in contact with their relationship manager as soon as possible.
APPROACH
Once the site goal and channel role were outlined, I detailed some of the tactics and principles that would help guide our decision making and support our objectives.
TACTICS
Strategic Market Positioning and SEO
Working smarter not harder
Thoughtful Forms and Form-fields
Don’t discourage engagement with too many form fields. Gather what we can, and ask for the rest.
Clear Calls to Action (CTAs)
Be more prescriptive and precise with our buttons/CTAs so users have clearer expectations and avoid any decision paralysis.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Customer-focused
Approach every detail with a user-centered mentality.
Lead with Expertise
Our people are our strongest asset. Highlight their expertise when possible.
Less is More
The old website was overloaded and unorganized with disparate content. Remember the site goal and curate content thoughtfully.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Looking at the two other major competitors in this space, it was clear that there was a large gap to be filled by Agri-Access being the “people-first” organization. Agri-Access was small and nimble and was able to have personal relationships with their clients. The other organizations were large and impersonal.
Leading with the people first thinking influenced every aspect of the site from the information architecture to the voice and tone.
IA WORKSHOP
Once we had our goals and objectives set, the team moved onto a content audit. Significant changes were being made to what this site would contain, versus the existing version. We looked at content from a couple different perspectives and explored various navigation and IA directions from those learnings.
IA CONCEPTS
CONCLUSION
After sketching out how these approaches would translate into page design, the team and clients agreed that a more simple, brand-led navigation made the most sense per our objectives. Not only did the navigation now reinforce the new brand language, it also created a very curated system for the client’s team to manage as they populate with content in the future. A specific challenge that was noted in discovery was the “Frankenstein” problem. Anytime someone needed something on the site, they added another page or component. Our new design would naturally prevent that and help users have a more clear understanding of the type of content that is intended to live on this site.