Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Brand Transitioning

The past couple weeks we've been gearing up for the brand transitioning that's going to happen over the next 2 months. I can say I'm liking the new look, which is much cleaner, has larger font and has incorporated much of the feedback that we've gotten from our awesome early adopters.

Learned a few things about designing along the way that I thought I would share with my fellow entrepreneurs:

1) Before you even think about the layout of your website, choose your colors right. Our brand started out with two pretty catchy colors: lime green and creamsicle orange. When we launched the website, we launched it with a Beta group, consisting of a younger customer base that was willing to put a thousand or a few hundred at a time through the system to help us show that the concept worked.

2) Expect your colors to evolve. When PeerFX launched to the public, the heavy users were people ranging from 30 all the way to 85 years old. This meant that the lime green and creamsicle orange was too hard to read (and so was the small charcoal font). I loved the brand but things had to change in order to cater to our customers; people that actually PAY for our service.

3) Expect your layout to evolve. If you initially start with a 3 column page or a horizontal top menu bar, you can expect that to change as well. It's really amazing how YOU think everything is so clearly laid out while your customers are emailing/calling you day and night asking you where everything is on the website. If you thought your site is easy enough to be used by your grandparents, think again (or actually get them to test it, which we did).

4) Change Takes TIME. Even though our awareness isn't huge right now, there are still customers who are used to seeing the lime green and orange. So if you are changing your website layout, font, colors and content....try to phase it in so existing customers don't get confused and think they've landed on the wrong website. We're doing it step by step, sticking with the primary colors in the first transition and making the layout cleaner and the font easier to read.

The new design will be wrapped up end of this month and will be integrated in early December. Stay tuned for the latest news here!

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