Rebranding and website development project for a Naked Finance.

Introduction

Naked Finance began life as three friends who decided that they wanted to see Financial Advice done differently. The friends left their Multi-National Firms to start up a finance company with a difference. They wanted a friendly brand that spoke with honesty and that was accessible to every Kiwi. One ambition of the founders was to break down the walls surrounding financial advice and make it appeal to all Kiwis. They wanted an approachable brand and a website that held clear information that was easy for their consumers to understand.

Project overview

They wanted a simple digital stack that could be largely managed in house. The project included brand development, design, content creation and the development of a fully responsive website. The website itself included the integration of existing email clients, new forms, social media integrations and future proofing CRM integrations. SEO, GA and Google Business set up were also completed as part of the project.

Project challenges

Naked Finance was a brand that was already in existence but only as a mortgage broker. The website was overly basic and lacking in functionality and with no digital expertise in house, the clients were unable to elevate their online presence to anything more. There were a number of other tools that the clients wanted to integrate with the site and a number of automations as well. With the brand expanding from just offering mortgages to being a full financial service, the founders had limited understanding on how the brand and digital presence would need to evolve in order to reach their new target audiences.

The Process I undertook:

1. Market research: I analysed the financial market online to see how competitors were operating in the space. It quickly became apparent that there was not a terribly evolved digital environment for financial services. Most industry brands were using basic interfaces with minimal information available to the public. This appeared to be in an effort to drive ‘contact us’ conversions but it led to extremely poor UX for the audiences. Naked Finance wanted to ‘revolutionise’ the way they represented themselves online. They wanted complete transparency of information and to have a UX centric approach to their website design.
2. Rebranding: The clients were offering a new service to what they had previously which meant that their target audience and brand personality would need to be updated too. Using questionnaires, interviews and even role playing exercises, I helped the clients realise who their new audiences would be. With this new information we could update the brand to better suit the needs of the audience whilst still representing the core values and brand pillars that made Naked Finance.
3. Website design: Taking the website brief, digital requirements and the brand guidelines into consideration, I wireframed the design of the website using Balsamiq. This was an integral step in allowing the client to visualise the website concepts and ensure that all UX requirements were being met. It allowed for efficient client feedback and signoff of designs.
4. Website development: I identified the best website platforms for this company to be Wix. This is because they did not have any digital support in house and would not be able to divert any resources to managing or maintaining the site. Wix boasts a 99.98% uptime and provides many native integrations with third party apps. This made this platform a suitable choice for the needs of the client. I then found a selection of easily customisable templates that would suit the brand well and developed the site using the wireframe designs and brand guidelines.
5. Social media: I updated all the social media channels with the new brand guidelines and optimised Google Business Profile for the brand. I am also managing the meta ad account for Naked Finance to support lead KPIs and conversions.
6. Email marketing: I analysed and optimised the clients current automated email pathways to recapture cooler leads and help increase engagement with the brand via email marketing. I continue to provide copy writing services to Naked Finance and ongoing email marketing strategy.

I managed this entire project from concept to launch and continue to support the business with landing page design & build, integrations, email marketing and social media marketing.