Case study

Brand differentiation in a digitising industry

Client

Swype

Sector

B2BC

Process

Brand creation and UX design

Company Cards was looking to consolidate its three existing brands to more clearly reflect the product quality and technical expertise their customers valued. They knew they needed to differentiate themselves from the competition and also recognised that digitisation was a priority to ensure the company was prepared for the future. So alongside fresh branding, a revised website and new online ordering portal would be required.

Approach

Our approach began with speaking to Company Cards stakeholders to truly understand the business, its people and its customers. The business is an established market leader in the production and supply of ID and security cards, working with a range of high-profile clients in sectors such as healthcare, government and construction. So this was a crucial step in helping us to identify where new branding could add value to the customer proposition whilst bringing Company Cards’ employees with us.

The information gained at this immersion stage allowed us to create strategic assets including audience personas and customer journeys – important steps in building a sound foundation for both our branding and digital work.

Swype right

Research into customer requirements identified that Company Cards frequently offered an important route to solving a thorny problem – customers were not always knowledgeable about the specific types of cards they needed but recognised the implications if they didn’t get the right product first time. It might have a knock-on effect to their own customers, or in some cases mean security systems would not work correctly. They relied on Company Cards to advise them on the best solution.

So the way in which the company’s expertise offered efficient, ease of use and peace of mind to their customers became a key focus of our strategy.

This led to the creation of the new Swype identity – concisely communicating the efficiency message, backed up by product quality and technical expertise in a format ready made for digital.

This identity was then rolled out across a full range of brand assets including business cards, emailers and social media graphics. The existing Company Cards website was also to be retained to act as a channel into the new digital portal – so this was reskinned to bring it in line with the Swype brand, with focussed sector-based landing pages added to maximise opportunities to lead people through to the portal.

Swype

Portal to more online sales

Now there was an effective new brand in place, Swype needed to ensure it was using technology to its best advantage in growing sales.

With a range of different potential customer groups and an extensive product portfolio, we needed to ensure a clear and pragmatic plan was in place for how an effective portal could be launched without getting waylaid by appealing but unnecessary features.

Building on our existing knowledge of customer requirements, we produced a series of recommendations on what features should be prioritised in a minimum viable product, and which could either be disregarded or scheduled for addition at a later date.

This specification allowed us to then focus on user experience – optimising how the portal could be most effective in people moving from a landing page through to confirming a purchase. This included the scoping of user flows and site maps which informed wireframing and front-end designs.

This also allowed Swype’s developer to easily implement how the site looks and interacts once back-end work was complete.

Our Work & Expertise