Bridging.com are a hybrid marketing startup offering consumers a research tool for self-development, along with advice-based filtering to match deals with the best lenders. They came to us looking for website design and brand direction for their new website, and had a team of in-house developers who they needed us to keep informed of progress and provide a comprehensive handover to once the designs were complete.
The Bridging.com team had big plans for this business, and needed a website design that matched with their aspirations. Their old site was very basic, and looked generic and cluttered with nothing distinctive about it. This also didn’t fit with their tagline of ‘simplifying bridging finance’ – the messaging was contradictory and therefore ineffective. They wanted a fintech feel to the site with lots of white space, graphic elements, and a clean and human feel, so we worked with them on their brand development and image direction to ensure that every part of the site would reenforce that feeling.
To ensure that the calculator was simple and easy for users to interact with, we followed UX best practice design for application forms. This included utilising dropdowns/checkboxes/toggles instead of typing fields to speed up the process, and reduce the capacity for human error.
With the design led by the overall brand goal of simplify, we approached this project mobile first. This meant that we designed the mobile templates before the desktop templates, working from the most simple design and expanding that out for desktop, rather that starting with the more expansive design and having to remove or reduce elements for smaller screens. This ensured that the appearance on mobile was perfectly optimised for Bridging.com’s target audience, and that the design stayed clean throughout.
We reviewed typography and colour choices early on, which suggested a direction that worked with the brand goal simplify. The bright aqua colour linked to a financial technology industry but ultimately it was about giving the messaging space to be bold and confident.
Image direction was a critical part of the site, and we worked with the Bridging team to create a library of images with agreed instructions on image direction. This ensured that their internal team could follow prescribed guidelines throughout their online and offline campaigns and advertisements in order to maintain brand consistency across the board.
Bridging.com wanted to portray itself as a hub of information and resources for anyone looking to obtain finance. This presented an opportunity to offer advertising space on the site for third-party finance providers, which both increased their trust ratings and provided an additional income stream. We suggested a three-tier option for them where the top tier would get a full-width module including info and their logo, whilst the third tier would get a basic link – this provided a clear incentive for them to choose a higher tier, as their brand would be more visible.
We developed the application form process to follow best UX practice and to include more engaging elements for what could be quite a mundane process.
By using toggles, dropdowns and checkboxes we were able to speed up the process of finance applications and ensure that there would be far fewer drop-offs on these pages.
We add new projects to our portfolio as we finish them, so check back regularly to see what we’ve been working on.