About the project
mobileLIVE's old site was approaching the end of its lifecycle as it no longer represented the rapidly growing company faithfully. Expanding to many new services, adding more logos under its belt and becoming more than what it was 3 years ago, the brand was in need of a dire refresh.
Under the lead of our Marketing Director, I worked with our small in house marketing team to create a whole new direction for our website, as well as explore initial concepts for a refreshed visual identity and establish a foundation for an appropriate branding guideline to follow. My role was pivotal at the very start, I was the lead designer in the team and involved in every part of the decision making process.
Our team was robust and thorough: we had an initial audit of every piece we wanted to address with the redesigns, consolidated all the web pages and other branding material, conducted competitive research and analysis before presenting to the larger team and working on visual designs.
mobileLIVE's old website. From around 2018 to early 2022.
The Problem
There were several issues we wanted to address with the website rebrand. And this will be the first step in what was to become an overall brand refresh, so we we had to identify the main issues and bad practices currently ongoing.
Accessibility: failing WCAG AA, lots of text on image, bad contrast, small+thin text, no alt text for images, too many carousels
Visual palette: dark, too many colours, too many different styles and contradictory imagery and visual patterns used
Visual elements: thin lines, complex icons (that were hard to create), bad hierarchy, no typographic variety
Content: growing expertise, new portfolios, new services, everything had to be reorganized under a new site architecture
Maintenance: severe complexity, every new service/tool needed a new page, bloated dropdown, a lot of time in design + dev for every change, difficult to update and keep consistent
Many of these issues also affected other branding and visual material. There wasn't any alignment on what were producing so the results varied greatly. Having a unified visual direction across all material was something we needed to address. Doing so will give the brand a stronger voice and allow it to stand out more amongst the crowded tech space.
Competitor Analysis and Service Segmentation
Early wireframes
Braindump of content and ideas
Website Redesign Goals
After research, analysis and groundwork, our team aligned on the goals of the project and had presented a barebones version of our new visual and content direction.
Experience
Simplicity - visual impact and direct messaging
Easy to navigate to the desired objective
Copy on all pages to provide quick browsing
Fast loading speed by keeping it light on effects
Use Orange and Grey to register the brand colour
Use original mobileLIVE images where possible
Easy to navigate to the desired objective
Copy on all pages to provide quick browsing
Fast loading speed by keeping it light on effects
Use Orange and Grey to register the brand colour
Use original mobileLIVE images where possible
Business
Establish clear positioning - Who, What, and Why
Focus on select Expertise and build deep dives
Present case studies with more confidence
Bring forward mobileLIVE story and leadership
Beef up on why work for mobileLIVE
Sales be able to use the site for intro sessions
Focus on select Expertise and build deep dives
Present case studies with more confidence
Bring forward mobileLIVE story and leadership
Beef up on why work for mobileLIVE
Sales be able to use the site for intro sessions
Content and Navigation
The biggest uplift was in the amount of content on the expertise pages as well as the navigation. We extensively discussed with business and worked with our content lead to reduce our bloated dropdown to just 1 page of highlights. Not only does this improve navigation but allows users to skim easily through one page (expertise) for everything we offer. We no longer force our users to click around finding something obscure, waiting for things to load and having to interact with carousels to reveal more of our capabilities.
New Home Page
New About Us
Conclusion
This was one of the largest projects I worked on during my time as the company's in house designer, and although my role for this project ended on the visual design portion before handoff to devs as I took on a new position, the original foundation work and visual direction we created was approved as the visual style the company aimed for going forward. I'm extremely happy to see that it launched successfully and that my work and design solutions have helped to shape the brand going forward. The visual identity of mobileLIVE is much stronger post redesign and all the material the company produces feels unified and aligned with the newly established tone and direction.
Check out the new website at www.mobilelive.ca