Case: ABN AMRO MeesPierson
Financial Focus: Smart content, and more flexibility for editors.
Financial Focus (part of ABN AMRO Mees Pierson) is a platform that we have been developing for several years now. It’s a content platform that focuses on informing and inspiring the affluent.
In early 2018, it was time for a thorough overhaul. We were excited to team up with ABN AMRO MeesPierson again and embark on this redesign journey.
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The project
ABN AMRO MeesPierson was looking for freshen up the look and feel of its Financial Focus content platform. Over the past few years, the platform had evolved. Since the content had altered, the site structure needed to be reviewed, too. Additionally, the editing team had requested to get more flexibility in the back-end.
This all led to the request to be able to combine the various content categories and tags. Besides that, editors requested more flexibility in creating landing pages. That way, they were better able to target content to specific users. At the same time, they could accomplish their SEO and marketing goals more easily.
The goals
To ABN AMRO MeesPierson, it was important that:
- the new design would feel contemporary;
- the content and navigational structure would be improved;
- the back-end would include more editorial options.
The approach
For the redesign of Financial Focus, we opted for an agile approach. The main reason for this was that ABN AMRO wanted to test the new design with a selection of their target audience. Within the first design sprint we focused on creating a visual prototype with several core pages. The Financial Focus team then used these for a user test. After that, we used the results to optimize the design.
After improving and fine-tuning the core parts, we rolled out the new design to the entire platform. Our developers translated the designs into a dynamic website. In continuous communication with the ABN AMRO MeesPierson team every step of the way.
“Because of thorough user testing, we were able to make better decisions for the design.”
The solution
The new visual branding of the Financial Focus platform seamlessly join the other platforms in the ABN AMRO MeesPierson ‘family’. At the same time, the new Financial Focus platform has gotten its own unique style. Moreover, both the new look & feel and the code in the back-end now meet international digital accessibility standards.
Financial Focus editors now have a lot of freedom and flexibility in creating content. The challenge was to make the back-end as user-friendly as possible. Adding a clear structure and hierarchy to the Gutenberg blocks helped do that!
Editors are now able to:
- Use content blocks to create SEO and marketing landing pages in any layout.
- Add filters to blocks in the back-end to show articles that meet specific criteria. This way, editors can mix and match to their heart’s content and persuade users to keep reading!
- Generate “tag” based landing pages automatically. This is a huge timesaver.
Improving the navigation and structure helped visitors determine what content is valuable to them. Now that editors can add tags to content, visitors can easily discover more content on the same topic. As a result, they will likely visit more pages and consume more content.
“Coming up with the right url-structures, filters and archives was a challenge. In cases like these, we prefer to respect WordPress ‘core’. By doing so, we ensure stability of the environment.”
“The design has gotten a full makeover and feels crisp and contemporary again. We also renewed the site architecture by choosing new categories, tags and topics. Now that we’re able to use tags to fill landing pages and article pages, the platform has become more dynamic as well.”
The result
The result is a fresh new website that offers a solid foundation to keep evolving. With the new Gutenberg editor, editorial options are virtually unlimited. More so, by using tag-based dynamic components, editors can now quickly and easily generate pages based on specific topics.
Continuous development
Of course, a platform like this is never finished. We’ll continue to evolve Financial Focus. This new flexible setup makes it much easier to add new types of blocks and to optimize the entire platform, though.
In need of a redesign?
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