Goals

The primary goal of the Analytic corporate site redesign was to establish the company's independent brand with a great presence on the web. Analytic wasn't looking for the look and feel that would replicate their print materials and pitchbooks — but rather complement them, expand, and provide consistent brand experience for the firm's clients.

The team was looking to have the ability to update their site content frequently and provide access to the firm's groundbreaking research. Analytic also planned to expand the site in the near future by adding videos, webinars, blog, etc.

Solution

Through a series of interviews, Cloud Construct learned that the Analytic's culture is not a typical investment management one — no muted blue and grey colors, parquet floors, or buttoned-down Brooks Brother's shirts. It's younger, more casual and definitely a "new world". It may be the only financial firm where you'll find surfboards in the lobby. The Cloud Construct team worked with the Analytic team to expand the company's color pallet and imagery. This would give viewers a sense of energy, creativity, and would help explain how the firm sees the world of investing differently.

We didn't want to use cookie-cutter, stock photography of people "celebrating" a new home, a retirement, and etc. Analytic is not a retail-oriented firm, its portfolios appeal mostly to institutional investors. Its major strength resides in the sophisticated and complex design and implementation of its investment portfolios.

The challenge was to graphically depict the idea that the investment team sees the world of investing with new eyes.

Cloud team decided to communicate this idea by taking the photographs of common objects and cropping them, zooming in on them so they would look almost not recognizable, bur rather something different and new.

By combining then this imaginary with intelligent quotes, clean typography and modern layout Cloud construct delivered the site, portraying Anaytic as innovative, youthful, passionate, entrepreneurial, progressive firm:

• The tone of the site is serious, but not boring.
• The colors, photography and typographical treatments are elegant and don't feel stuffy.
• The overall design is clean, messages are straightforward, clear and easy to absorb.

Technical Solution

The technical solution the Cloud team provided was a Windows Azure hosting environment with Orchard CMS. We customized modules for form submissions, document downloads, and CRM capabilities on research requests. The Cloud Financial Platform allows for easy updates of content, and scalability that ended up being the perfect solution for the client.