Strategy in every phase
Working together through initial consultations and high-level recommendations, ZAG and American Eagle FCU conducted a collaborative discovery session to capture the institution’s business goals and marketing objectives for the website redesign. The combined project team from the credit union and ZAG determined critical components for the new site, while defining the brand attributes, core messaging, requested functionality, and success metrics. With all this vital information, ZAG planned the website architecture, creating a new sitemap that provided a comprehensive overview of the future state.
Design for a modern user interface
Using the new site structure and together with a design strategy, ZAG created detailed wireframes that illustrated the direction for the new website. Using these wireframes for strategic guidance, ZAG’s design team produced original concepts that incorporated the institution’s existing brand standards to give American Eagle FCU’s website a fresh look and feel. Utilizing core brand colors, unique graphical elements, custom iconography and stock photography, each page offers a flexible hierarchy of information that focuses on member education and clearly conveys next steps. The design was also validated through usability testing, which showed that the new design was much more intuitive for members to find what they are looking for, learn about financial products, contact the credit union and more.
The approved desktop design was then translated to mobile and tablet through responsive design, ensuring a seamless experience on across devices.
Copywriting to guide members
In order to clearly communicate the benefits of banking with American Eagle FCU, the institution entrusted ZAG’s copywriting personnel to develop new content for the site. Capturing American Eagle’s distinctive tone of voice, the new web content is friendly and conversational, highlighting features of the site, while describing the credit union’s products and services in an engaging way that encourages conversions. The website copy is also written following search engine optimization best practices, infusing relevant keywords naturally to be valuable for both site visitors and web crawlers.
Custom Kentico development to combine function and ease of management
To ensure a stable, scalable and easy to administer site, ZAG recommended the Kentico CMS to American Eagle FCU. Created with marketers in mind, this popular content management solution allows American Eagle FCU to seamlessly make updates to the site, and benefit from marketing features as well. Integrating the institution’s online banking and other transactional platforms, ZAG’s development team also created a custom locations management tool as well as a rates management tool to simplify sitewide updates and easily present essential information to visitors. Contextual calculators, advanced search, embedded forms and other added features further assist the user on the site.
Marketing to grow membership
The website redesign allowed marketing to be a top a priority for American Eagle FCU to both grow and cultivate its member base. Visitors can quickly and easily learn about the advantages of membership and how to join the credit union from multiple pathways. The site also provides ample opportunities to communicate financial products and services, including homepage rotations, in-page promotions, related products, featured rates and campaign landing pages. Site visitors are treated to fresh and relevant content through a portal to the latest news and community events. There are many strategically placed touchpoints throughout the site for lead generation and conversion. ZAG additionally devised a personalization plan for American Eagle FCU to customize site content based on select criteria, tailoring the experience for members upon implementation. Furthermore, ZAG’s digital strategists assisted American Eagle FCU to identify key performance indicators for the redesigned site, creating a custom analytics strategy and custom reporting.
Adhering to the guiding principle of the entire project, American Eagle FCU’s redesign resulted in a member-focused, user-centric site. With accessible information and insights – from locations and rates to resources and education – the website achieves the major purpose of the redesign: making American Eagle FCU members feel in control over their financial choices.