Planful, formerly Host Analytics, is the leading specialist provider of cloud-based connected financial planning and close solutions. They provide a single, cloud-based EPM platform with everything finance teams need — planning, consolidation, modeling, reporting, and analytics. We partnered with Planful to redesign a flexible website with a focus on lead generation, content strategy and user retention.
Overall Outcome
The new design gave the Planful brand a modern yet grounded tone in communication and design that better relates to their target audiences. It also brought together what was previously 3 seperate websites under one roof, making maintenance and upkeep much easier.
The Results
The website was custom coded for Wordpress’s new page builder technology, Gutenberg. GRAYBOX created plug and play custom content blocks for Gutenberg which led Planful’s editorial team to easily create new pages with these new custom content blocks.
146%
Increase in Conversation Rate
374%
Increase in Absolute Goal Completions
31%
Increase in Mobile Session Duration
68%
Reduction in Total Pages during the Redesign
The Overall Problem
Since Planful did a rebranding (and renaming) earlier in 2019, the website has been outdated for many months. This misalignment, fueled by a market analysis finding that pointed to low brand recognition, led to the Planful team to want to redesign their website.
Separately, Planful old website consisted of 3 sub-sites that lived on separate CMS’s. This setup made it very difficult for their internal team to maintain it. The inflexible nature of the old Wordpress themes was a deterrent for the editorial team to create new content for the site. Their team needed a website that communicated their brand well but also be extremely flexible for marketing teams to create pages that did not depend on a strict layout.
Our Solution
1. Discovery & Planning
GRAYBOX project manager, along with the Creative Team and Content Strategist worked with Planful to outline the direction and goals of the new site. This was a collaborative process to ensure GRAYBOX had a clear understanding of the project. Using techniques like the SWOT exercise, we defined the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats for the brand in regards to the old website. As our teams engraved themselves with the new Planful brand and the purpose of the new website, we gained enough understanding of the brand to start the Content Strategy and Wire-framing phase.
2. Wireframing, Content Strategy & Visual Design of Multi-Lingual Website
Starting with Content Strategy, our team did a comprehensive Content Audit, Audience Definition and Competitor Analysis. Defining the audience segments and their needs helped us outline the different content blocks, the flow and the information architecture of the new website. High-fidelity wireframes were followed by User Interface design which kept Atomic design principles as the foundational approach. The end design gave Planful about 25 custom content blocks which we would then develop as plug and play pieces in Gutenberg for flexible page building capabilities.
3. Development, Project Management & Launch
Throughout the development process, The Project Manager at GRAYBOX worked with Planful every step of the process. Since the development phase of the project requires many micro-decisions, the developers worked very closely with the Project Manager as well as the Planful team to build a website that would meet their needs. Planful’s new and powerful website was launched on July 30th, 2019 with many happy faces from both teams. The site included what was previously 3 different CMSs into one, and gave them the ability use the 25 new content blocks to create new pages as they wish moving forward.
It’s always fun when we get to work on a redesign of our prior work, and this time was no different. It’s been amazing to work on such a large and complex content site with Planful. Our goals were to reduce page count, while also improving usability, conversions and SEO — and we’ve nailed it on all points.
Our Services
GRAYBOX worked with Planful to optimize their website, brand, and operations.
Planful now has a gorgeous new site that is outperforming it's prior site in key conversions.
Planful's trust in GRAYBOX as a full-service provider to design, strategize and build it's new website is paying off in big ways. The new brand direction looks fantastic and establishes a foundation for all their future online and offline efforts. Moreover, the 1.5x increase in conversions should impact revenue in a big way.
146%
Increase in Conversation Rate
374%
Increase in Absolute Goal Completions
31%
Increase in Mobile Session Duration
68%
Reduction in Total Pages during the Redesign
Get In Touch
If your fingers are tingling for more, get in touch with us. We'll assess the needs of your business and answer any questions.
Our Results
