In the studio this week… An emotive and engaging website for Customer Essential

I’ve been looking forward to blogging about this site now for several months, and I’m delighted to say that after much blood, sweat and tears, the Customer Essential website is now live <drum roll please>.

We have loved every moment of creating this website because of the freedom and encouragement that MD, Liz Machtynger, has given us to create something really special for her. Liz has had the foresight to realise that just because she’s working with corporate organisations, it doesn’t mean that she needs to strip out all semblance of her personality. And that’s really, really refreshing.

This is going to be a bit of an epic post because I’d like to take you on the Customer Essential rebrand journey and show you just how we’ve taken Liz’s brand identity from stark and soulless to emotive and engaging.

Here’s Customer Essential’s original website.

I don’t want to knock it too much; but you can see the dramatic transformation between the “before” and the after. The stark colours, clunky logo and overbearing passion flower do little to create a feeling or warmth or professionalism. Let’s just say it was time to move on…

We’ve already talked about creating the logo and stationery here. And the new logo was an important turning point in Customer Essential’s journey. In fact, since using their new logo on their email signatures and using their new style PowerPoint presentation for their proposals, the company have had a 100% success rate with proposals, and have even had to turn two clients down as they were too busy! Now that’s what I call a result.

But back to the website.

Creating a design with so much emotion, that really communicates the essence of the business, didn’t happen overnight. Initially we had discussed designing one page for Customer Essential which they’d be able to take to a web developer (one of the team has a family connection) for construction. To keep costs low we had spent half a day creating a smart (and much improved from their existing site) design. And here it is…

Now for many businesses this would be fine. It looks smart, it’s well structured and it has some clear calls to action. Liz was somewhat of a dream client because she accepted that this was a good design for the time that she had invested; but she wanted more, and was prepared to invest more to enable us to get there.

I hope you’ll agree that the investment has paid off.

The new design has heart and soul. It beautifully sums up the company’s integrity, passion and quirkiness. And yet despite encapsulating the true soul of the business; it still has credibility and professionalism. But getting there wasn’t easy.

I for one, found it very difficult to overcome the idea that the company works with customers, and yet we weren’t showing any people. And the reason for this was quite simple: it’s hard to find images of people that don’t look like “stock photos”. Both Flourish and Customer Essential wanted to create a look and feel that was better than corporate stock photography. We wanted to create an emotive reaction; and so the idea of journeys came about.

Through the brainstorming session we identified the “heart” of customer essential and developed this idea of journeys through nature. Each of the Customer Essential team are very Autumnal, with strong connections to community, history, academia and the outdoors. This really comes across in the style of illustrations and the photos we’ve used.

People often ask me where the frog came from on the contact form – quite simply it evoked such a positive reaction in all of us during the brainstorming that we couldn’t not use it! It felt like the perfect quirky mix of intelligence, earthiness and results.

I think you can really see how the mood board has come through in the final design.

Personally I love the welcoming and warm welcome, and the way that the images guide you around the site.

And I think the illustrations Chloe and Rob have created add a nice warm and approachable touch.

The fabulous Matt Pereira took photographs of each of the team, which look just stunning, and importantly approachable and professional at the same time. And Rob created “pinboards” for each team member with their favourite things (including their favourite music, which is a big passion for the group).

The site has taken a long time to conceive: in both the planning and the execution and build. And Liz has ensured that she has invested properly in this to get the very best outcome. Already the branding is paying dividends and I’m excited to see how the new website helps the company grow moving forwards.

Tagged as , corporate, customer essential in Branding, Case Studies, Colour Psychology, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Web Design, Websites