Human Greatness As A Service

Branding and Strategy

We did a complete brand refresh for Arcules including their new logo and the applications to their brand. To begin, we like to learn about your competitors and identify what you do differently and better. That will answer the question ‘why’ someone should do business with you.  Most of our clients come to us because they like the way our websites look. But they stay with us because they perform. Our very first client is still with us and we are very proud of that.

At the core of Arcules’ brand is that AI is used by Arcules to augment human greatness.  So rather than software as a service (SAAS) or AI as a service we settled on Human Greatness As A Service.

Information Architecture, User Experience And Conversion Rate Optimization

Since a website is the first point of contact for an organization we wanted to walk you through the website building process here. For more detail about how we do a logo and brand book, please see the AmyriAD Case Study.

At the core of every great website is strategy. The next thing we recommend is to sketch out how users will interact with the website in real life. The organizational structure, the connection between different pieces of information and the framework that helps the user understand those connections. The hierarchy of information, categories at the top, followed by more specific subcategories for the user to navigate through. Then a more detailed view of the navigation and user experience (how the user moves through pieces of content and/or information). Information architecture is all about finding ways to help visitors use the website in order to reach their goal.

Homepage Design

After that we always start with the homepage. Many agencies do all the top level pages at the same time as they design the homepage, but since the homepage is the first point of contact people have with a brand we want to make it spectacular and prefer to spend all of our creative energy on the homepage first.

We begin by creating five different mockups ranging from conservative to a little bit “out there”. Conservative does not mean dull and boring though. In the kickoff meeting we discussed the things that Arcules was looking for in a “human greatness” theme and to embody the optimism of a future where humans are empowered by AI. We made our recommendations and everyone left with some idea of what the homepage was going to look like.  A dark theme was recommended to buck the trend of clean white websites that tech companies to use as their go to aesthetic.

We do 100+ websites a year so we see what works and what doesn’t. So we also wanted to show Arcules ideas that they hadn’t thought of. Not crazy or unusable ideas, but we like to push the envelope a little and show them something just a little past their comfort zone.

Interior Page Design And Mobile Mockups

Once the homepage is designed and approved we can work in parallel, designing the interior pages of the website or subpages while our development team is coding the homepage and the foundation code for the entire website.

For Arcules we picked 5 key pages to serve as templates for all the other pages on the website and did wireframes for these pages. Simple websites may need less key pages and large complex websites may need more. But 5 is a good starting point.

Since Arcules chose WordPress as their platform – for its rapid editing capabilities and the wide variety of open source code that keep costs down during customization – the basic foundation is responsive, meaning the design adapts to mobile devices and tablets.  This meant that we did not need to focus as much on the mobile design since that was already baked in the WordPress code. So we concentrated on the desktop pages and created a set of wireframes that define the layout of the pages using the look and feel determined by the homepage design.

Content Creation

Quality imagery, text and video are the most important part of a website. A simple website with gorgeous imagery will look way better than a well-designed website with poor imagery. “Repurposing” existing content only goes so far. People crave fresh information. Once you have your strategic roadmap, you need to start applying it to every bit of communication that your organization produces including your website. Every single word should propel customers towards your goal. Every single image should get their attention and excite them.

Arcules wanted to make the homepage more dynamic so we explored video animations based on the homepage design. To execute the animations, we presented portfolios of 5 different animators that we recommended and the Arcules team chose the one they liked best. We then had that animator interpret the imagery outlined in the approved homepage mockup and then our development team used javascript to make it react as you scroll through the website.

Development And Coding

Once the homepage design was finalized and approved to code by the Arcules team, we matched the design pixel for pixel on our development server. We do this so that if our client has an existing website up and running, we can keep it functioning while we create their new website.

We code the homepage first because that creates the foundation of the whole website. This is called the “Alpha Work Period”.  This is where we also code the header, the footer, the colors, fonts and visual style. Coding the homepage first  also speeds up the process so that we don’t have to wait until the rest of the website pages are designed in order to start.

Once the homepage coding is approved, we code the subpages. This is called the “Beta Work Period”. Like with the homepage, we code them on the development server. The Beta Work Period is the longest because In addition to coding many more pages and optimizing them for mobile devices we also do an SEO Sweep to make sure that Google sees them when they crawl the web and install the Analytics code so we can see how people interact with the website afterwards.

At the very end we do QC (Quality Control). Mockups are created at 1400px for desktop, 768px for tablet and 360px for mobile devices. Once the website is fully coded and approved for functionality and content, our team meticulously goes page by page, using each of the most popular browsers, Chrome, FireFox and Safari to make sure everything is working properly at these formats. We also check it on the major Apple and Android devices.

Deploy and Optimize

Once we finished the walk through and got the final approval from the Arcules team, the website was migrated from our development server to the Arcules live server. When we launch a website, we want to make sure that it will perform. Branding and marketing is all about the data so, to ensure success we use the Heatmap and Analytics code that we installed to track the real life performance of their website.

This is where the data comes in. We call it “The Wheel of Fortune”. Here is the formula:

• Look at how the Strategy is performing in real life: Everything starts with strategy so you need to look at the heatmaps and see if users are interacting with the website as you planned and if not, adjust the strategy accordingly.
• Look at your Advertising: You want to make sure the strategy is properly applied to your ads and that it is driving the “right kind of traffic”. This is important because getting people to click on ads is not hard. Getting the RIGHT people to click on ads is much more difficult.
• Look at the Homepage and Landing Pages: You need to make sure the key pages of the website are doing what they are supposed to do and adjust if they aren’t. Driving traffic to your website is easy with paid ads. Getting people to buy stuff is the hardest part of marketing.
• Always look at you Heatmaps and Analytics: Now that you have a great strategy, great ads and a great landing pages, you need to constantly watch how well they perform in the real world over and over agin because the world stops for no one. This is why we call it “The Wheel of Fortune”.