Recently LoadSys experienced just that. Our brand was getting stale, being created in 2002 and slightly changing in 2008. We realized we needed something new, something fresh, something that would not only change our brand experience for our customers, but also drive us in an upward direction as a company, including employee morale.
In the past we would rush a brand design and site design. The exact core values we tell our clients not to do. We failed to execute the quality craftsmanship and dedication that goes into our clients into LoadSys itself. So, what did we do? We treated ourselves like a client, creating a plan, establishing a budget, and assigning project managers to the project.
Planning and Execution
We have always talked of taking LoadSys in a bigger direction. Over the years our team’s capabilities have grown and we are able to take on much larger web development projects. So, our primary goal was to shift out of focusing on certain technologies we use to develop software and instead focused on some of the primary industries we have helped make customers successful in. While having a technology focused site, we always kept it more fun and used more vibrant colors, we decided to switch directions and go towards a more serious, professional, and mellow tone. We found some competitors that were using similar techniques and compiled our ideas to execute this.
Logo Design and Branding
This is the absolute core of this project. We had to get this right and the rest would start to flow. Here are some examples of the final deliverable of this phase. Needless to say, this got us excited again.
You can view the full re-design deliverable here.
Website Re-design
Now that we had a vision for our brand, we were ready to take on the website. Our existing site had a lot of aspects we liked, but also had a lot of things we did not like. This is fine and there is nothing wrong to reuse items that have worked in the past. For instance, we kept some of the areas of our site that focused on the technology we use, we just now chose to keep it off the radar more. Our blog was a big aspect that had to stay. We have many developers that come to our content frequently for help with their work. So, we kept this content. All of this is fine, but as mentioned, we still wanted to change our primary focus to attract the industries we mentioned above.
With the new brand, coupled with a solid homepage that makes it very simple for visitors to know exactly what we do in the first couple of seconds was crucial. Our site needed to look professional to attract the clientele we want to approach and we think we achieved that. We also changed our core focuses to industries we have thrived in. You can see we included that in a few spots. This is only a small portion of the deliverable for the website design portion and of course there have been tweaks since we have launched.
You can view the full website re-design deliverable here.
After nearly 4 months of hard work and a costly investment, we finally launched in April 2017. We have seen our bounce rate decrease by nearly 25%. We are converting on many more visitors and larger clientele we are trying to market to.
You see, we were blind. Here we are, a web development company that does quality work, and we failed to treat our own work and our own business as quality. It only makes sense to use the same processes that we do for our very own clients on ourselves.
In the end, this re-branding didn’t just create a new look and feel for us. There are many intangible benefits including:
- Awareness of business goals and visions
- New exciting areas to market and advertise in
- Employee morale boost
- Executive officers morale boost
- A feeling of pride and confidence when speaking with potential clients