Emporiom Digital
Building a strong online presence for an agency to increase engagement
UX Research | UX Design | UI Design
Project synopsis
For its 10-year anniversary, Emporiom Digital wanted to revamp its brand presence and website to stand out as a distinguished agency in the digital marketing space.
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My role: Brand strategy, user research and analysis, ideation, wireframes, visual design, building on Framer.
I collaborated with Swikruti Mishra (and Emporiom Digital's team) for UI and development.
Problem
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The website did not convey 10 years of industry experience.
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High drop-off rate from the homepage.
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Low lead generation and job applications.
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​Over 5 seconds of load time per page.
Analysis
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Showcasing old work that looks outdated to new/potential clients.
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More text and fewer visuals made the website impersonal and less appealing.
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Unclear list of offerings.
Solution
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Modernizing Emporiom's brand positioning, narrative, and visual design to address client requirements and build trust.
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Creating an intuitive and interactive user flow that accounts for diverse use cases and enables them to take appropriate action.
Challenges
The biggest challenge we faced was building the right narrative for Emporiom Digital.
After exploring multiple options, we decided to enhance the existing approach of storytelling to build on its existing legacy but with a contemporary touch.
01 — AUDIT & RESEARCH
The old story
Considering themselves as storytellers and having transformed 150+ brands in 10 years, Emporiom Digital (aka EMD) struggled to showcase their expertise and culture due to a wordy and confusing website.
This led to decreasing engagement and cost them many new clients.
Problems observed
Heuristic analysis showed the following:
Overwhelming text
EMD's storyteller narrative led to a text-heavy and non-scannable homepage creating cognitive overload.
All text was in lowercase making it inaccessible for screen readers.
Poor navigation
Missing visual connectivity between different pages and the navigation bar.
Unclear and hidden CTAs led to zero engagement.
Inconsistent layouts
The lack of a design system made every page look different and disconnected, causing users to recall instead of recognise.
Google Analytics study
01. 95% drop off rate from the home page
9 out of 10 people spent under 1 minute on the homepage and did not engage with other pages.
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02. Second highest engagement (less then 5%) was with the Contact Us page
1 in 10 users landed on the Contact Us page but did not result in any action.
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03. More focus on brand/team story
Unclear navigation led to less than 1% visits on Services and Case Studies.
However, users did want to learn more about the company and team culture.
Research insights
Users expect to see storytelling expressed visually and not through long text
A wordy website with minimal visuals can dramatically decrease page views (by over 80%).
Humanising a brand can increase its credibility exponentially
Seeing the people behind a brand builds instant connection and relatability, making users trust them more.
Crowded category; figuring out ways to create differentiation is critical
Emporiom competes with over 200 digital marketing agencies catering to the same segment in North India alone. Finding a niche and building a story on top of that can help differentiate the brand.
Goal
To design a website that showcases Emporiom's decade-long journey through their work and culture leading to an increase in lead generation.
We did this by:
01. Better positioning
By adding solution-finders to the current storytellers' narrative, we created a revised strategy that strongly positions EMD as experts and builds trust.
02. Showcasing expertise
Highlighting EMD's sectoral expertise through their work and case studies was key to bringing in potential new clients.
03. Highlighting culture
With the data showing that users were keen on knowing more about EMD, we built an experience around team and culture.
02 — STRATEGY
Repositioning EMD
Constraint: Since Emporiom wanted to ensure brand recall and retain their storytelling narrative, we could only extend/modify the current branding and visual guidelines to match the new strategy.
2.1. A new narrative
We assigned the brand 2 archetypes - Creator and Sage, which became foundational to content creation and design decisions.
Creator
Creativity
Sage
Expertise
2.2. The right users
3 distinct personas were created to design the website experience around:
• Old clients
Contact Us
• New clients
Services
Work
Culture
Contact Us
• Job seekers
Services
Work
Culture
Contact Us
Creative
Technology
Digital
2.3. Core offerings
Borrowing from the hexagon in Emporiom's logo, we imagined a dynamic cube where the 3 visible sides correspond to Emporiom's 3 core services. We use this as a unique element in our visual language.
03 — IDEATION
Revising the architecture
3.1. User Journey
Adding dedicated pages for Services and Culture simplified the experience for users.
3.2. Exploring narratives
Copywriter Megha Moturi and I explored multiple narratives through content and design that made Emporiom's storytelling interactive and visually compelling.
04 — DESIGN
A new experience...
4.1. Storytelling made visual
Clearly structured sections with visuals and CTAs that establish EMD's expertise while building intrigue.
4.2. Focus on offerings and expertise
Dedicated pages that showcase Emporiom's services in different sectors and case studies for those services to ensure better clarity for potential/new clients.
4.3. A peek into EMD's culture
In line with the new narrative, we built a page focused on EMD's vibrant energy and ready-to-learn attitude. Dedicated sections like 'Growth Stories' show team member journeys within EMD to highlight growth and opportunities.
Testing of the wireframes led to the following result:
40%
increase in user retention
< 3
clicks to any page
or section
2x
effective
navigation
56%
decrease in user error rate
Final design
Visual design by Swikruti Mishra
