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Loyica's Impact on a small businesses growing locally LoyicaBlog

Small businesses are usually the ones struggling for stability and survival in an ultra-competitive business environment. They are also placed at the highest risk

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Author
Loyica Team
Apr 02 2019
Loyica's Impact on a small businesses growing locally

Small businesses are usually the ones struggling for stability and survival in an ultra-competitive business environment. They are also placed at the highest risk when the market conditions are quickly changing and fluctuating. This is why small businesses seek help from industry experts and companies that experienced and survived these conditions. A little piece of advice can be significantly helpful to small businesses and it can be crucial in staying afloat for the years to come.

This need for guidance is something that an advisory firm was able to identify in the market. And they seek to bridge this knowledge gap by providing expert advice to keep small businesses operating amidst harsh market conditions. What’s more, this firm also provides capital to small businesses if they assess that their business concept and model will greatly impact people’s lives and will be helpful to the industry.

This advisory firm has one challenge though, and that is its inability to connect to small businesses that it is targeting. How do you let businesses from around the world know that you are willing to partner with them? How do you convince them to partner with you? How do you present yourself as a credible firm fit for this partnership? These are some of the questions that we have raised and we seek to engage in the first few phases of our partnership with this advisory firm.

Because Loyica identified the platform needed for this advisory firm would be complex, we needed to set our priorities straight. First, our priority should be simplifying this platform and making it user-friendly. There are a lot of explanations why this is extremely important.

  1. Simplicity is not just about design but it is also about the experience. We bring the old-age adage “less is more” again, that applies to almost anything including design and user experience (UX). When customers are faced with something complex and difficult to use, there is a high likelihood that it will only discourage them from using it again. This is why Loyica prioritized the simplicity of the platform for this advisory firm because they want and they know that customers will use the platform again and again if they find it easy to use and navigate.
  2. Not only will simplicity allow for repeat use, but it will also encourage users to perform certain tasks intended by the designer. For example, if you want users to click on your Call to Action (CTA) button, a simple website design allows you to highlight and emphasize your CTA button, encouraging the user to click on the said button and allowing the designer to achieve his or her objective. No matter where the CTA button leads the website visitor to, it will only achieve one thing: the fulfillment of the goal of the client and the designer.
  3. Aside from encouraging the website visitor to perform certain things, simplicity will also allow the website to appear appealing in aesthetics. Right now, most designs are leaning towards minimalism. Again, less is more. And more customers are attracted to simple, minimalist designs because they look more modern, sophisticated, and elegant. Therefore, a complex website that is simplified by the website developer will attract certain clients and convince them to stay on your site and use it.

The challenges 

We have already established that complexity was a challenge we needed to engage. But we have to discuss what made the client’s requirements complex? Is it the User Experience the client requires? Is it the User Interface? Is it because the design takes a lot of coding and data for it to work well? Here are the explanations:


  1. Lots of Pages - By understanding the nature of the business of the client, the advisory firm, we concluded that the platform will have a lot of information-heavy pages. This means that every page the website visitor lands on will have a lot of texts, designs, pictures, and whatever we could put into the page to make it comprehensive, leaving nothing unexplained. Because our concern with information-heavy pages is that it may slow down the loading speed, we needed to find a way to simplify these pages to improve the user experience.

Loyica understood the balance between the information required by the client engaged in an end to end new market consulting and the need to make sure the website visitor will not get overwhelmed with the amount of information and will have a smooth navigation experience. Therefore, Loyica prioritized simplicity in the design and development of the client’s platform.

  1. User Journey - with the complexity of the interaction required, Loyica also understood the importance of making sure that the user journey will be simple, direct, and straightforward. Loyica understood that because the client is engaged in establishing partnerships with new businesses, the process of entering new markets is complex and requires multiple steps. This is why it is extremely important to keep the user journey simple and direct, allowing the user to find and action the next steps.
  2. Consultation - the target market of our client is not defined by one industry. Our client knew and understood that each business engaged in an industry may have different requirements with those engaged in another industry. So what Loyica did to meet this client requirement was to streamline the user experience in between, and within, different market segments. How did we do these?

It was simple.

First, we allow users to choose their journeys. This allows us to customize their experience based on their industry and requirements. We also provided a custom search that enables users to directly look for the information that they are looking for upon visiting the site. The custom search also allows for an intuitive and efficient way to organize information for the users, especially those that are visiting the site for the first time.

Second, after users choose the service that they want to avail of, they are directly informed of the process and the costs involved. This way, we enable users to make a quick and informed decision. We did not want them to get lost in the process as most platforms do.

Third, users can also “action” their decisions anytime, at any point of the journey. They could action a request anytime and for us to make sure these are all done smoothly, we needed to keep the pages simple and minimalistic, while making sure the CTAs are bold, clear, and emphasized.

Engaging Platform Design

To make sure we create and maintain an engaging platform design, we needed to study two important things: first, which typography to use. Second, what color palette to base the design from.

Studying typography not only entails understanding the effects of typography to the user psyche, but it also requires the designer to make sure the typography matches the client’s branding and design preferences.

After a few meetings for consultation, Loyica decided to use Montserrat Extra Bold and Montserrat Regular, typographies that projects simplicity, sophistication, and modernity. They are easy to read and they make thousands of words on one page not overwhelming to understand.

Loyica also decided to use #312366, #e26012, #b2119e, #e9f7fd for the color palette, which not only matches the client’s branding but also makes sure that the user is not overwhelmed by the use of colors on the platform.

Conclusion

Imagine with all the possible steps the user have to go through to get the adequate information to avail of our client’s services, we were able to reduce the user journey to only three simple steps. That makes the platform easy to use and navigate. The segmented search also allows for a customized experience, quickly leading the user to the information he needs and requires. A cost comparison tool is also provided for the user, allowing users to directly understand the processes and the costs involved with the service they want to avail. All of these allows Loyica to help our client engage with small businesses to penetrate their own local markets. Who knows that one day they might go international.

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