Newsweek Expert Forum (NEF) is a vetted networking community for executives, speakers, authors, and academics in the worlds of technology, sciences, health, social issues, and more. Members are interested in sharing their expertise and gaining more brand visibility.
The challenge:
The community was not experiencing growth, and member feedback showed there was not enough focus on the audience. The target audience included 13 verticals and at least 9 seniorities. Analytics and heat maps showed that users were quickly scanning the website, not finding what they were looking for, and weren’t taking time to complete the long application form. For months in a row, the terms and conditions and privacy policy pages were among the top traffic pages. The website was very small and lacked sufficient details to help users along the buyer’s journey to a purchase decision. It was decided that a brand refresh and website redesign was in order to deliver the information necessary to increase qualified traffic and membership applications.
My role in the brand refresh:
Before any design work was started I led the team to research, learn and understand who our existing member base was so that we could define the top 3 personas and a brand messaging framework that would drive engagement and revenue growth.
After the personas, brand voice, and messaging framework were defined, we looked closely at the parent brand to identify key brand elements that were clearly Newsweek. We were looking for ways to tap into the brand affinity Newsweek users knew and loved and incorporate them into the child brand.
Once there was a deeper understanding of who the audience was, and the brand elements were defined, we moved to content messaging with a keyword strategy. The focus was to answer - What am I buying? - and Why do I care?
My role in the website design:
I partnered closely with my UX and web design teams to share the new brand vision and some key brand elements. The goal was to create a feeling of both ‘arrived’ and ‘in the now’, consistent with Newsweek.
Keeping the audience and the real-world news feeling of the brand in mind, we focused on including information relevant to membership to help users quickly understand what membership meant, and how it could help them further their careers and impact. User needs determined the information architecture of the navigation and home page. So we placed the most important information first and told a logical brand story.
Animations and micro-animations were added in the header images and throughout the pages, to give the site a dynamic feel. Important content was included such as social proof, member benefits, membership qualifications, membership packages, success stories of existing members, and an about us page with mission and vision statements. We also applied UX best practices to the long application form so it didn’t feel so daunting to complete. Images were oversaturated to fit in with the real-world news images on the parent site, and icons and vector images were added to tell a visual story in alignment with Newsweek print magazines.
The redesign included a refresh of social messaging and creative to align with the new brand and website.
the results:
Almost immediately post-launch, the new pages with membership details became the top traffic pages on the website. Time on site increased, and membership applications increased. Through analytics and BI data, we saw that there was more consistency in the verticals of who was joining the community, offering relevant spaces and groups for all members to network, share executive insights, and grow personally.
To learn how I increased brand lift by 361% post rebrand and website refresh, read about Business Journal’s Leadership Trust.