Sequest Consulting
1-week Design sprint building a website for the consultancy side of the business
The Task
At the time I was working with the sequest the product was being funded by revenue coming in from a consultancy service. Businesses would come to Sequest for advice on Green Policies and general Sustainability strategies.
The Brief
The task was to build a low-cost website for the consultancy service. A website which could be live in a week and could be distributed to prospective clients showcasing Sequest Consulting's services. George, the founder, would provide the content.
I had responsibility for the Visual Design, UI Design, Website Design and the logo & tagline.
The Problem
After being briefed by the founder it was clear that we had some differences. He wanted for the service to be separate from the central Sequest business. He wanted to run the service under a new name and identity. This would extend the design process as I essentially had to start from scratch to build a new identity for the service.
Solution
After several conversations I managed to convince the founder to name the service 'Sequest Consulting' and keep it under the Sequest umbrella. I told him that it was much easier for customers to get on board with a brand where they are a one stop shop for all sustainability services. From a UI point-of-view it was also much easier to keep consistency with the other products.
Logo
For the logo I wanted to keep it in line with the other Sequest products. With this in mind I chose a similar typeface in Acumin Pro and added 'Consulting' in bold at the end. It wasn't groundbreaking but I felt it looked professional and also looked similar to how other competitors looked.
For the tagline I went through a few iterations and presented them back to George, the founder. In the end we decided that 'Define your Sustainability' was the most direct message we wanted to show prospective clients on landing on the site.
Content & Information Architecture
It was important for the website to be pretty simple. It was effectively a digital flyer which could be distributed quickly with information digested easily.
The navigation elements don't take the user from the page, it simply drops down to the relevant section.
The elements we included were;
About Us - Introduction to who Sequest were and how they can help businesses
Why Sustainability? - It was important to include what the benefits were for businesses embedding sustainability strategies. We wanted this to be shown in a quick and easy format
Our Services - Showcasing the services on offer when working with Sequest Consulting
Testimonials - Important for a new business to prove they are a trusted service
The Team - Short bio for the two employees showing their background
Contact - Footer with contact details and a form which would send mail directly into the inbox
Next Steps
As I presented the design I included some next steps.
When funds allowed I suggested to upgrade the site from a generic SquareSpace template to something more dynamic
Include testimonials as and when they come through. It’s very important to update websites as they can quickly look old and tired
Include case studies and proof of work as this would add credibility to both the brand and the website.
Learnings
Designing on SquareSpace can become repetitive however it is sometimes the only option given the budget was so tight
It’s often hard to explain to the founder how restrictive SquareSpace is. They often want something that is not possible without coding experience.
Final few words…
Overall I enjoyed the process however I don’t like designing things on SquareSpace, it’s very basic and doesn’t allow me as a designer to express my full creative capabilities.
Next time I would suggest scaling up to a more powerful platform like WebFlow to allow for more dynamic capabilities.