SOUNDS TRUE
BRANDING & WEBSITE
BRIEF
(in a modern tweet)
Welcome to Sounds True. We have a new logo and in the 35+ years we've been a business we've never had a brand book. Can you please help us?
Yes.
APPROACH
Handed a new logo and a long runway, I rallied a team of 20 creatives to band together and build the new branding for Sounds True from the ground up, word by word, pixel by pixel. After countless meetings, drafts, options, rewrites, and an intensive two-day brand visioning session, we emerged out the other side with a beautiful brand book and creative focus for a company that had been brand rudderless for a very long time.
Creative Direction
Lead Designers: Elizabeth Puetz, Rachael Murray
Lead Copywriter: Joe Ditta
ROLE
THE BOOK
Knowing that there hasn't been anything formalized in over 3 decades, we realized it all needed to be written down. The history, the vision, the values, the designs, the writing, the everything. A great Brand Book should speak for itself. It's often one of the first things people see when they start at a new company. The way I see it, if the world ended and someone stumbled across your brand book, they should be able to know exactly who you were, what you believed, what you offered, and how you showed up. This is one of those brand books.
THE WEBSITE
As a natural progression, once you land a brand look and feel your website is immediately out of date. We took the fresh brand book out of the oven and put it to use building a new website that not only embodied the new brand, but also was more functional, and higher converting.
USER FIRST
While the old site got us to where we were at that point, it wasn't serving our customers the way they needed it to and there was lost money on the table from the disorganization and choice paralysis. We made sure first and foremost that the users coming to our site could find what they needed, and quickly.
SIMPLIFY. SIMPLIFY. SIMPLIFY.
A lot of the user feedback stated that there was too much on the site and too many places to look. So we made sure to root the site map and new mega nav in cascading content rather than overwhelming.
A FOOTER NOT FORGOTTEN
In all of our screen tests and analytics, we noticed that a lot of action was happening in the footer, so we took equal time structuring the footer as much as we did the mega nav. This ensured people found where they needed to go quicker and with less pecking around.
WIRED FOR SALES
We kept sales top of mind while creating the wireframes. While the wires were created with users in mind to get where they wanted to go, we made sure to go section by section and create a cadence that was a methodical ratio of information to product to cart and in reverse as well.
Information eventually led to a product and then into a cart. And products would lead back to more information. This kept the user in a flow that eventually led to a sale. Not only did the new site result in the best eComm sales the company has ever had, we found that free content would lead people back to the site and eventually to products in their carts.
CONVERSIONS NEXT
We knew we were missing opportunities to close more sales as our site is a trusted source for our customers. We made sure through the simplifying of menus and letting the design breathe we had opportunities to convert interest into dollars. We started by converting the backend to Shopify for more eComm options, then created a shopping concierge and recommendations system. Finally, we used strong design fundamentals to change hierarchies and lead the eyes, and clicks, where we wanted them to go.
CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME?
The Sounds True customer service team has always gone above and beyond to help the customers, sometimes being on a call for more than 20 minutes to help people find something that interests or helps them. But as we know, they can't always be there. So say hello to the website version of Bodie.
While Bodie on the Sounds True One app is all about providing subscribers with content and navigation. This Bodie is all about leading you to a product that fits you and your cart.
Knowing that one of our biggest user cases is people don't know where to look first, or which product is for them, we knew it was critical to provide a tool that helped narrow down our thousands of products into about 5. And bundle them if they wanted to explore them all!
REVAMPED FOR EASE
Based on the new and improved wireframes for our product pages we kept things simple and focused on purchase. Using Shopify we combined SKUs, made formate selection a breeze, put all of the information into an easy to read structure, and incorporated a new ratings system.
And with our new website version of Bodie created, we strategically placed the tool in critical points on the website to help confirm products for purchase and lead to more.
DESIGNED ON A STRONG FOUNDATION
As a classically trained graphic and web designer, I find myself always thinking about the design of everything, but I know through years of experience, that it needs to come last. It is critical in projects like these to let the research and structure lead, and then make it as pretty, appealing, and approachable as possible. All while utilizing advertising principles to close a sale.
