Best-In-Class Website Migration and Upgrade
15 Years of Progress in Three Months
I led a team of in-house and contract copywriters, digital specialists, and graphic designers as we created a state-of-the-art 140-page financial industry website in half the time such an effort normally takes. In partnership with an award-winning agency and our VP of Marketing and Business Development, my team met regularly to discuss and adapt our process and direction. We worked hand in glove with our agency to facilitate the copywriting, editing, and approvals needed to keep our content compelling, on-brand and consistent.
This new site took Sooper Credit Union 15 years into the future and gave us a brand refresh that has the envy of our peers. Highly responsive and optimized for mobile, the new site at Soopercu.org positioned the financial institution to clarify and rejuvenate its corporate branding.
Build It And They Will Come
We built our renewed corporate digital brand using a style guide that clearly defined our acceptable fonts; colors; and logo styles, sizes, and uses. In conjunction with our agency partner, we engaged executive leadership of the company in a series of discussions that culminated in a brand refresh complete with descriptions of our newly emerging brand voice, target personas, brand mantra, and key messages. We laid out our new site architecture and created visual and narrative content for our entire array of marketing materials with these in mind.
I personally created visual, writing, and compliance guides to help team members stay on brand and in compliance.
Members, fellow employees, leadership, board members, and experienced vendors commented on the stunning improvement they noticed following the unveiling of our new site. As a Culture Committee member, I contributed significantly to our new values, mission, and vision while earning record-breaking earnings as the organization maximized impact for over 35,000 members with assets growing during my tenure by nearly 30%.
Completed In Record Time
Building our new site required hundreds of choices, and the work was completed in record time according to our experienced vendor - thanks to the extraordinarily collaborative work of our team.
A fundamental decision was to create persistent header and footer menus site-wide that provided members with access to crucial - often legally required - information. These included contact information and geographic locations, disclosures, rates, digital access to accounts and information including a secure “Log In” portal, employment recruiting, and social media links, along with our family of four “mega menu” - or umbrella - product and service offerings: Personal, Business, Features, and Empowered Living. Each family of products and services then differentiated into individual categories such as Checking, Savings, Investments, Loans, Member Tools, Merchant Services, and so on.
Hovering over our persistent "Mega Menu" at top of each page reveals our levels. (See graphic below.)
Graphic showing expansion of our hierarchy when cursor hovers over our persistent "mega menu."
Life Stage Member Marketing Similar to ABM
We utilized life stage marketing to present our extensive library of fresh financial education materials for which we owned rights to edit and reformat.
Micro-Stories Maintain Interest
Most individual categories throughout the site feature a compelling top level headline that leads the reader through a short "micro-story" culminating, often, in a friendly or clever ending that highlights the benefits or desired experience of the product or service. (See "Checking Accounts" below.)
From there, individual products and services within each category are described.
