Websites have evolved immensely over the last few years. Gone are the days of building sites in Flash or populating pages with tons of content by “stuffing them” with keywords to increase Google rankings. Today, visitors are looking to get information quickly and easily, whether on a desktop, tablet or phone. As a result, companies must try to keep text to a minimum and ensure that their site is accessible and easy to navigate across multiple devices.
Creating a responsive web design, which provides an optimal viewing experience, no matter how a user is accessing a website, is the key. Responsive design allows easy reading and navigation without having to zoom, resize, pan or scroll. Today’s content management systems (CMS) make responsive elements fairly easy to rollout and maintain.
In addition, today’s website visitors want content that is specifically targeted to them and their needs—it’s the advent and reality of the term “content marketing” that you’re hearing so much about and we’ll cover in a future blog. This requires companies to have deep understanding of their target audiences—their behaviors, goals, concerns, needs, drivers and more. Then, companies must develop the right content materials to help educate a prospect and drive action.
Our client, Axiometrics, recently overhauled their website for these very reasons, so they asked us to assist with part of the redesign – specifically the website strategy, visual design and copywriting. We had great fun to help a wonderful client enhance their brand and better connect with clients and prospects. Many collaborative work sessions were held and great ideas emerged…it really does take a village.
Axiometrics provides cutting-edge apartment market and student housing research that allows their clients to make business decisions about their apartment investments with confidence. The previous site was cumbersome and challenging for visitors to understand what the company does and what value they provide. Axiometrics wanted to create a more personal connection and help visitors to quickly find the information they need, whether in the office or on the go. They accomplished this with the launch of a responsive site within HubSpot, a content marketing and website platform.
As part of the strategy process, we segmented the site into five main audiences and six main product and service offerings. Using “persona” concepts and paths (i.e. representative types of visitors) on the home page enabled Axiometrics’ audiences—those who are looking to acquire, develop, invest, finance or manage apartments—to quickly get to the product and service offerings that will benefit them most and in the language that they speak. The copywriting focus was on active voice, action bullets, short summaries and opt-in spots for visitors to dig deeper. For those who want more information (i.e. content marketing), there are videos, whitepapers, data sheets, infographics and sample reports on each product or service as well as general thought leadership on the industry and economy.
Beyond having volumes of current, relevant data, Axiometrics also has powerhouse analytics and economics teams that write meaty newsletters and blogs, find and share compelling industry updates via social media and serve as frequent interview guests and event speakers. As such, ensuring that we created a “sharable” website was critical and required strategically placing content among sections and share tools for blogs, news articles and content pieces.
As we tackled the visual design aspects, we knew the key was to create a tight color palette and images that would not compete with the graphics of various content videos, charts, graphs and the like. The client’s signature red color was used as the anchor with brand images in a blue duotone treatment and a companion color palette of shades of gray and blue. Additionally, supporting accent colors were introduced with the five audience types and carry over to support data graphics for a consistent brand experience. The resulting look has now been carried over to white papers, enewsletters, presentations and other materials.
Thanks to our friends at Axiometrics for allowing us to polish your brand, tell your story and capture your value.
Websites have evolved immensely over the last few years. Gone are the days of building sites in Flash or populating pages with tons of content by “stuffing them” with keywords to increase Google rankings. Today, visitors are looking to get information quickly and easily, whether on a desktop, tablet or phone. As a result, companies must try to keep text to a minimum and ensure that their site is accessible and easy to navigate across multiple devices.
