Meridican Website Redesign – A Case Study

The Challenge:

dividerMeridican creates spectacular incentive travel and CSR programs, and plans meetings, special events and corporate branding initiatives for clients like RBC, Home Hardware, U.S. Foods and more. With a staff of 28, and over 30 years in business, Meridican was in dire need of a website that better reflected their range of services, vast experience and fun-loving personality.

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THE HATS I WORE

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  Art Director

  Photoshopper

  Illustrator & Typographer

  WordPress Customizer

  UX Designer

Project Manager

Before:

Photos. Stock images sometimes had a whiff of fakery.

Design. Box-inside-a-box design was dated, and its restrained size lacked visual impact. Heavy amount of brown was weighing it all down.

Copy. Vague and failed to engage. The HOW (how do they do it?) was conspicuously absent.

Navigation. A maze of submenus produced an unfriendly and at times frustrating experience.

Functionality. The website was only built for desktop computers; it could not be viewed efficiently on mobile devices.

meridican_old_site copy

AFTER:

Photos. We populated the site with photos of real people doing real things. The two women pictured at the left are actual participants enjoying a real incentive travel/CSR program organized by Meridican.

Design. Taking advantage of available real estate, we placed a large rotating slider above the fold, filled it with big, bold images that conveyed the company’s services and personality. We punched up the heavy brown with orange and a breath of fresh white.

Copy. To reinforce visual storytelling we appointed three carefully chosen words for each slider. Immediately below: “Teams work better when they play together.” The copy is authentic; for anyone who knows the playful team at Meridican, it sounds just like them. But don’t just take our word for it:

Veteran editor Julie Charles, who knows the company, had this to say:

“I was immediately impressed by how friendly and conversational the language is–definitely not your standard-fare, corporate-speak kind of website. Love both the words and the visual approach. Reflects the brand so well.”

Navigation. Six tabs in the main nav bar, each labelled with a single word makes the experience easy and fast. Why? Because we respect your time (and know you don’t have a lot of it).

Functionality. We produced a completely mobile-friendly site that can be viewed on any type of device, big or small.

“From Day One I was extremely confident in Pixels & Prose and knew that a partnership had truly been created. Sherryll and Maureen never let us down, the timelines were always met, challenges (if any) were discussed immediately, and necessary adjustments were made seamlessly. I could never have imagined that the process of a total redevelopment of our website could be so easy! We are so pleased with Pixels & Prose that we’ve retained them to design and write our quarterly newsletters and blogs.”

Terry Manion | Executive Vice President, Meridican