In spring of 2020, Directly completed several major technology and platform enhancements that provided greater flexibility and versatility for customer support organizations. As part of the shift in this offering, they needed a website that highlighted the new platform functionality and that positioned them as a high-end, enterprise software company, while also differentiating them within an increasingly saturated AI vendor market.
While Directly’s color palette of yellow and black was a bold departure from the common use of greens and blues within the customer experience (CX) and AI industries. he application of stock portrait photography was highly generic and no longer represented the full capabilities of the platform and company offering. The pages were hard-to-read, had no clear story-telling, and lacked click-throughs to further engage users on the website. Additionally, the overly simplified navigation bar required visitors to scour the site looking for specific information related to their individual business objectives – prolonging any initial outreach and diminishing sales engagement.
My first step involved outlining the key brand attributes, identifying Directly as a technology company with a memorable, confident, knowledgeable, and authentic personality. To avoid additional photo licensing fees and provide the website with a fresh look, I designed custom illustrations to clearly define the various platform solutions., I also added additional accent colors to differentiate the five new APIs. The design explored how to incorporate geometric shapes to quickly convey the difference between the platform and Expert Network. Product, engineering and sales teams were enlisted to outline the key components of the platform, its unique features, and underlying market value, which led to a complete overhaul of copy aimed at driving inbound interest, educating the buyer, and accelerating the sales cycle.
I removed all photography from the site, and replaced it with new illustrations to easily convey complex technological processes. To create a more approachable demeanor, I subdued the black elements, and transitioned the yellow and white to e primary colors for the platform and solutions pages. I added animations to draw the buyer’s eye to key information. A new color palette was tested and applied to each of the 5 APIS to easily differentiate them for buyers, while geometric shapes were applied to the platform and Expert Network – a cube now symbolizes the Directly platform and triangles are used for the Expert Network. I modified the navigation bar, providing a more robust and informative design that allows visitors to easily find information on each individual platform solution relating to their unique business objectives – eliminating the need for users to randomly search the site for specific information.
Within a month of launching the newly designed website, Directly experienced a 65% increase in web traffic to the individual platform pages, as well as a substantial increase in demo submission forms.
