Designing a brochure webpage for an insurance broker
The scoping and design of a brochure website for a new insurance offering. The goal of the site was to be desktop and mobile friendly, SE- optimised and visually appealing. The customer wanted to avoid actual photographs and chose to stick to a cartoon styled theme. My role in the project was to design and style the site, receiving the copy from the client and handing over a style sheet to the out-sourced developer.
Stoltz Consult
2010
Insurance and Risk
Cape Town, South Africa
3
Challenge
The customer had a need for a site but had no direction in terms of what look and feel he wanted. I sat with him and understood the business needs and projected target market. This helped me understand the company's intended Corporate Image. From here, I developed 3 stylised designs for the customer to review.
Results
The site design took 5 business days to create; given that the work was part time it took a bit longer than normal. The customer was made aware of this from the start so there were no complaints or dissatisfaction upon a slow delivery. The customer was provided with an initial design to review (without copy), after approval he provided the copy and the full design was sent to the developer for completion of my role. The customer was thrilled with my work and ability to keep him updated on the progress of the work. The site is live currently and I have since received a few requests for work from friends of his needing something similar.
5 stars
Review left by the customer
5 days
From spec to design
543
Visits to the site since it went live
Process
Research & Analysis: I sat with the customer and identified what he had in mind for colour choice and general feel. We also reviewed some previous documents he had written up for the business to see what could be used in the design. I then took him through some inspiration boards to see what pieces he liked and noted those.
Information Architecture: Based on the research findings, I decided a single page scrolling site was the best approach to keep the site quick to load and easy to use.
Wireframing & Prototyping: I designed three initial options to help the customer finalise what style he wanted to stick with for the end product. After a brief video conference and review he settled on the final look and sent through the remaining copy. I added this to the site and sent the required files to the development team.
Usability Testing: Testing was considered out of scope for this project.
Visual Design & Style Guide: In the design I included the full package of files as well as a write up that detailed font choices, images, heading styles and which items had unique effects (like shadows). The site was designed without future updates being required, but the files can be reused as they were stored in a secure archive on my design profile.
“ The site looks amazing! I love the choice of graphics and placement of the images and "big numbers"! ”
Isaac Stoltz
Owner, Founder | Stoltz consult
Conclusion
The design and scope of the website was a fun exercise for me to undertake. I am not used to designing for the insurance industry and I wanted to bring a fresh take to the very drab themes that are present in so many other sites. The client loved my work and was very understanding when I informed him of the delay in delivery. I think this project is important to showcase given its very usual nature of design work, and therefore is good to prove that I can enjoy the usual unexciting projects as much as the big-wow ones.