01.

Learning about the client

The website build started off as all my websites do – a long conversation with the client, Neil, to find out all about his business.

Prosper Business Finance provides business to business finance solutions. The website needs to reflect the professional nature of the work, balanced with being approachable and friendly.  

The website also needs to have all the information clearly laid out, and speak to both smaller businesses (for whom this might be their first use of B2B finance) and the more established businesses. 

02.

Developing the brand

As I was able to develop the brand from a blank sheet of paper, that gave us the flexibility to explore lots of different branding options.

We settled on a colour palette that incorporated a ‘serious’ blue (#052F5F) alongside a bolder orange (#EE6C4D). The two colours pair really well, and whilst the orange could be seen as a brave choice, I chose one that didn’t veer towards neon or childlike, instead leaning towards a brick orange.

Font choice was straightforward. A handwriting font would have been inappropriate, and a serif font, too cluttered.  So Libre Baskerville (bold) for headings and Open Sans for the main text.  This is one of my favourite font pairings, it’s clean and modern.

The images I would use needed careful consideration.  Stock photos of bundles of money, or businessmen sitting together, would be too obvious and lower the credibility.  The client and I agreed that a combination of plants to represent growth, combined with shots of modern business owners in their setting, was the right approach.

03.

The design takes shape

 I chose a full-width style for the website, split into two straight down the middle, using bold blocks of colour to highlight key messages.

The orange is used to highlight key elements of the website – buttons, some headings and icons.  Also, I used images with an element of orange to provide a coherent design.

Finally, the client needed a contact page that worked for them.  In order to achieve this, I developed a contact form which set out the range of services available.

The client was very pleased with the end result – and has since moved onto a monthly website care plan with Web Alchemy.