Van Eperen
About
A public relations and marketing agency based in Bethesda, MD, Van Eperen was well established with their local, government clients. They were ready to make the push into the private sector at a national level and wanted their site to reflect their depth of experience and capabilities. We gave them a brand refresh and a total overhaul of their site architecture and design.
The problem
The site needed to allow users to easily navigate by industry or service, and speak directly to both corporate and government clients. We also needed to establish Van Eperen as a robust team of thought leaders in the field of PR.
Business goals
Create a beautiful site that reflects Van Eperen’s culture and is easy to navigate
Generate new business from private sector national clients
Boost overall traffic through SEO and thought leadership content
My role
As the lead UX Designer, I was responsible for establishing the strategy of new website and establishing the conceptual and interaction models.
Main tasks
Designed the information architecture
Conducted 1-1 stakeholder interviews with the leadership and sales teams
Designed wireframes which established the way in which the user would move through the new website
Led user flow workshops with the client
Designed final experience
Visual Designer: Trevor Best
Success metrics
Increase traffic to the “Insights” section where blog posts were written by 50%
Increase private sector client base by 25%
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have intentionally not used real data.
Process
Discovery session
During the discovery phase we identified and explored the client's wish list for the new site. We then listed out all the features they had asked for and matched them to the goals, eliminating any feature that did not meet a specific goal. The end result was an agreed upon set of goals and objectives and a realistic features list.
Information architecture
Based on the learnings from the discovery session, we created main navigation items for industry, service, or sector (corporate/gov’t).
Sketches
We created a complex tagging system that allows users to filter the case studies and blog posts by industry, service, or sector.
Lastly, we included a dynamic component of Related Content at the bottom of each page to give the users a pathway to move seamlessly throughout the site.
Wireframes
First impressions
Explore case studies
Mockups
First impressions
Explore case studies
Stakeholders
We engaged with the founder of the company and her leadership team. They each brought a clear vision of what the website needed to do and why. They were thoughtful and passionate and great partners in the redesign.
Launch
After months of hard work we launched the brand new face of Van Eperen. The client was thrilled with the final product! They have been actively writing and adding new blog posts to their site, which our flexible design is successfully supporting. They're speaking at events and growing their business - and they're able to highlight all these accomplishments on their website.
Post-launch
We put Google Analytics in place to track user behavior on the site. At the time of writing the site had just been launched and we do not have any data or insights to share.
What I learned
Designing for a creative agency has challenges
As a PR company Van Eperen is a creative agency themselves. As a result, they had a lot of opinions on how the site should look. Our visual designer redesigned the site entirely 3 times before we found a direction they were happy with. Communicating frequently and bringing them more intimately into our design process helped ensure they felt like true partners in the creative process.
Relying on the client to act as a surrogate user is dangerous
Time and again we run into the challenge of getting access to customers and are left to rely on the client as a surrogate user. While they are often very knowledgable there is no substitute for connecting with an actual customer. Pushing for focus groups or finding access to anyone that had a need to find a PR agency would have been immensely helpful.