How we implemented our new website optimized for conversion

With The House of Marketing undergoing changes in the past two years, it was time for the website to be brought up to speed and be the final milestone in our evolution. We wanted to properly showcase our new and improved ambitions, and make it more than just a viewing platform to our clients.

Most importantly, we wanted to showcase the bonds between the entities within Customer Collective and how we are truly integrated companies that are not stuck in separate silos. Therefore we brought on our sister entities for this project: Fightclub for the website design, Upthrust for the website development, and our own employees for the copywriting and visuals.

Together with Upthrust and Fightclub, we sought to:

• Modernize and align our website branding to our new ambitions
• Pivot the website to be more of a tool rather than just a visual to our clients and customers
• Be more customer centric and integrate our sister entities at Customer Collective within the website

The project consisted of different phases:

Kick-off

We began with consolidating the information we needed for the project and taking a few small decisions to envision the design. Our first steps included:

• Benchmarking against the previous website and deciding what was currently working and what seemed unnecessary to take to the current website
• Talking to the relevant stakeholders to understand their needs and wants for the website, including their aspirations for the brand and the importance of our company’s culture
• Understanding how much change was needed from our previous website to the current one, ensuring that the design was future-proof and could organically adapt to future changes

Framework and design

Based on the information from the kick-off phase, together with Fightclub we began:

• Building a very basic version of the website we envisioned: as simple as placeholders for headers, text and images
• Taking these frameworks and transforming them into a modern, clean and calming design focused on conversion
• Shifting from the previously bright and bold palette of the previous website to our current, easy-on-the-eyes blue and yellow duotone website

Alignment

Once we had a working draft of the new website, we wanted to realign with the original stakeholders to ensure it was still in line with their original vision and ideals for the website. Before entering our final phase, our cross-entity team:

• Consulted with the relevant stakeholders to ensure we had implemented all their ambitions and best practices, and that the vision of our value proposition was actualized
• Reviewed the existing copy on the old website, seeing what needed to be realigned to our new vision, or removed where necessary
• With Upthrust’s digital experts, we began implementing the desired aspects into the website, creating a living platform that was easily adapted to any necessary future changes

Consolidation

Our final phase was to put the finishing touches on the website and revisit all aspects, down to the last detail. Together we finished the project by:

• Having the final touchpoints with the stakeholders to give their last bits of input
• Doing final integrations of changes that were suggested by the stakeholders
• Completing a final review of the website to ensure everything works properly and is up to our standards

By the end of the project, our cross-entity team had reached the following results:

• A new website, optimized for conversion and properly aligned with our evolution and values
• A brand that was still our own, but that integrates all the entities of Customer Collective and demonstrates our collaborative methods
• A platform that was not just a visual greeting card, but a modular tool that can be used to inspire future clients and potential employees
• A design that was future-proof: allowed us to be self-sustainable for any changes down the line without having to frequently revisit the design

• Forced our team and stakeholders to deeply evaluate who and what The House of Marketing is and our place within Customer Collective: gave us a clear idea of what we want as a company, our values, and our future goals and how we can present that to our clients
• This project became a shining example of how Customer Collective collaborates so smoothly: meeting new and interesting colleagues, being able to overcome roadblocks together and bring complimentary minds together to deliver an amazing outcome
• The importance of working agile really stood out, and made the project much smoother to implement as we consistently received feedback from stakeholders and broke the project into much smaller, easier to handle tasks