Revolutionizing financial services with tailored websites and seamless customization.
Overview
Hearsay Systems works in the highly regulated world of insurance and financial services. They offer a SaaS platform that allows their customers to build and grow relationships through compliant websites, social media, and texting.
Our focus was on their websites.
Their first ask was to design and build three “Starter Kits” – websites which would be used by their insurance agent and financial advisor customers, that were ready to go by simply adding customer-specific text and images.
Their second ask was to create the ability for those sites to be further customized by their Professional Services team so that new colors, fonts, and graphic elements could be added with a limited amount of time and effort.
The first Starter Kit needed to be delivered less than 3 months from kickoff, with the remaining two Starter Kits delivered a month later.
The enhanced customization project needed to allow for seemingly infinite permutations of the sites which could be implemented by their Professional Services team within a set number of hours.
Challenge
Provide three designs which would be appealing to many different insurance/financial services agents / companies to represent themselves.
The UX needed to be flexible enough to accommodate many different Hearsay customers yet solid enough to meet the requirements and compliance standards.
The creative needed to provide several designs that fit within the aesthetics of the insurance / financial services industries while still being fresh and welcoming.
Approach
We audited existing Hearsay Sites websites and competitive sites to identify and develop 7 templates and their respective content needs. Wireframes were produced based on these findings.
Solution
Three unique designs we called Bold, Classic and Curved that have the flexibility to accommodate client colors and font customizations as needed.
For all designs, flexibility was a huge consideration. So when I was creating each “Starter Kit” I ensured ADA compliance was top of mind especially in selecting colors for CTAs, text blocks, headings and other controls. Each design style had to have the same elements within each module, so there was a design challenge to make each “Starter Kit” look different enough, while still having the same functionality and user experience.
I designed both the Bold and Curved themed “Starter Kits”.
For the Bold style theme, I leaned into a more traditional style financial look. With hard edged elements and a color palette revolving around are blue primary color.
For the Curved theme “Starter Kit”, I designed a contrasting look to the other theme. Creating a more approachable, soft feel, through curved elements, a contemporary color palette, and bringing in supporting patterns to add flexibility to the end user if they wanted to exercise a little bit more personality in their site.
Results
“I am not exaggerating when I say our team squealed with delight during each design review. And we were so impressed by how quickly the dev team worked to bring the designs to life, after rapidly onboarding to Hearsay’s platform. All with impeccable and timely communication along the way. It has allowed Hearsay put our best face forward when demo’ing our updated Sites product. And just as impressive, extended the solution to the demo sites to serve as “no code,” brandable templates to offer to Hearsay’s Sites customers. The new demo sites are already helping to “wow" new Hearsay Sites prospects, and we look forward to rolling out the brandable “Starter Kits” this quarter.”
Christine Meginness
Hearsay VP, Sites Program