Historically, the majority of BlueCat’s business was won through a high-touch sales process, with marketing playing only a minor supporting role. As the market changed, competition grew, and a new Board of Directors was appointed, the go-to-market strategy was refocused on marketing as a primary driver for growth.
BlueCat’s website need to change to reflect the complex solution it was selling to a diverse set of buyers, with different pain points and priorities. The goal was to do a brand refresh and website redesign that would:
I served a number of roles in this project including:
A two-day brainstorming session surfaced the challenges BlueCat faced in the market. The process prioritized the need for BlueCat to emphasize security as an integral part of the enterprise DNS vision. This became the foundation for the branding and marketing plans for 2018.
DNS is the foundation of a network’s infrastructure, but DNS data can also provide invaluable insights with regards to cyberattacks. We discovered the majority of security teams weren’t leveraging that data. They may be the security experts but BlueCat knows and understands DNS and its role in security.
Through a series of exercises in the brainstorming session, key aspects of the brand were extracted and refined to define the brand’s personality: how it should look, sound, and act.
“DNS is serious, but we don’t take ourselves seriously. We need to communicate our expertise but approach it with a bit more of a playful attitude and personality. “
The blue color scheme was fully embraced. The blue from the previous brand palette was brightened up, the green and grey were replaced and yellow was added as the main complimentary color to provide a pop of colour for all CTAs.
The existing copy on the website had a tendency to lead with details about the technology. The content was reworked to have more personality with the buyer becoming the ‘Expert’ and BlueCat the ‘Brainy Sidekick’.
Priority was placed on crafting storytelling to clearly communicate BlueCat’s value proposition, features, benefits, and differentiation.
A variety of options were explored for imagery, eventually choosing an outlined isometric illustration style. This style reflected a lighthearted way of illustrating complex concepts without coming across as “cartoonish”. It was also a subtle nod to the way many network engineers illustrate their technical architecture diagrams.
This illustration style also had the added benefit of being modular, allowing for rapid variations and reuse of components – an important factor in meeting the 8-week deadline.
Simultaneously to the development of the WordPress backend production began on a series of explainer videos. The isometric illustrations allowed us to animate in a rapid fashion.
"My wife went on our website last week and said to me 'this is the first time I've actually been able to understand what you do' #Winning!”
We met the initial 8-week deadline for re-brand and re-positioning and made adjustments and updates in the post launch period.
Page Visits and Avg Session Duration increased while simultaneously decreasing bounce rate
In the month following launch, conversions increased by 37% and have averaged 25% higher to date
Increased average keyword ranking by 30 positions
