Optimized Digital Experience
Personalizing digital experiences with Drupal for an open banking leader
Personalizing digital experiences with Drupal for an open banking leader
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Open banking FinTech innovator
19%
Increase in contact form submissions
58%
Increase in gated content form submissions
55%
Increase in users who found the website via organic search
Though Finastra is one of the largest fintech companies in the world, it continues to operate as a disruptor. The software and service giant seeks to innovate and change the way banking software is developed and deployed globally. Since our first engagement to develop a Drupal-powered dev portal for Finastra in 2018, our work together has progressed—culminating in a complete transformation of Finastra’s main dot-com website into an innovative fintech experience.
Finastra has long been a fintech leader and pioneer within the emerging banking-as-a-service (BaaS) space. Its commitment to “open banking”—working with institutions and developers to build better financial tools—aligns with the spirit of open-source technology and our own commitment to its use.
After completing a 2021 brand refresh as a prelude to a new marketing initiative, Finastra was ready to transform its digital experience online. Our goal was to fully embrace a customer-centric approach that aligns the web experience with the user's needs, to simplify navigation, content, and information architecture, and to incorporate the latest UX best practices, B2B marketing strategies, and Drupal technology—so we could help Finastra continue to grow.
Open-Source Simplicity
Optimizing open-source development for an open-banking org
Optimizing open-source development for an open-banking org
While Finastra had already embraced the value of open source and Drupal, their previous site was cumbersome to use and expensive to maintain. Finastra produces a lot of content across verticals and solutions, and one of a CMS’s primary uses is to, well, manage content.
But Finastra’s output had outgrown its tools. It not only needed a fresh approach to managing content on the backend (to enable product and marketing managers to work effectively) but it also needed to present the content in a clear, digestible way for users. More for more’s sake is rarely useful, and our challenge was to focus on only showing customers what they needed to know at any given stage.
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Streamlined Navigation
Banking on simplification to improve site performance
Banking on simplification to improve site performance
With a footprint and product portfolio as vast as Finastra’s, it’s easy to let buckets and silos define a site’s navigation. But Finastra believed in the power of simplicity, and so do we. Our challenge was to see just how far we could go paring down the navigation while still communicating all that Finastra does.
A few rounds of navigation workshops informed by stakeholder discovery and user research produced clear categories that aligned with the business’ focus and user terminology. This is always a balance between what a business wants users to know, and what users think they need.
The new nav is segmented into large solution groups while limiting and prioritizing menu items within each. The end result? Users can find what they need, without becoming overwhelmed.
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Optimized Web Journeys
Investing in user experience to serve the right content
Investing in user experience to serve the right content
After years of working with enterprise B2B organizations, we see common problems occur and recur—so we've developed an arsenal of proven solutions to fix them.
A single-page conversion approach at the right stage of the buyer's journey, for example, ensures that everything a user needs to make their first decision is on the page.
Multiply this approach across entire sections of the site and you have dozens, hundreds, of high-performing pages rather than a complex, pie-in-the-sky “path” that you hope users take (spoiler, they won’t). With this approach, Finastra’s users find what they need, whether they’re coming from organic search, paid campaigns, or from the homepage.
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Bold, Thoughtful Design
Design that pays dividends on web performance
Design that pays dividends on web performance
With solid UX in place, Finastra wanted to bet big on a new look and feel. This was about a brand refresh, after all. But like other projects we’ve done where a brand has been defined but not tested, Finastra had room to explore.
While FinTech has a reputation for conservative design, Finastra’s new look embraces drama and moody excitement. It’s bold (and not in the bland blue and gray corporate sort of way). But Finastra’s design system is not just about pretty colors. For example, contrast is used sparingly to call attention to the right elements. If everything within a design is shouting to a user, everything becomes noise.
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Easy-to-Use CMS
Content management made simple with Paragon
Content management made simple with Paragon
Building a better content management experience for marketers was a primary goal for this site. We used Paragon, our open-source Drupal distribution for B2B, which provides drag-and-drop editing, easy media management, and a clean UI out of the box.
Simple, reusable content components based on a clear underlying taxonomy connects Finastra's content to solutions, themes, and regions—all managed and applied automatically. Admins write, tag, and post content, and the Drupal site ensures it gets where it needs to go.
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Smart Personalization
Invested in making fintech content feel personal
Invested in making fintech content feel personal
While the concept of intelligent web personalization is a staple among marketers, B2B companies still struggle to make this vision a reality. Even with Drupal, where tools like Smart Content exist to enable real-time personalization, there are challenges beyond technology—this is where strategy becomes key.
We built a personalization approach for Finastra centered on helping a user navigate the vast amount of resource content available. We could not simply list every resource and hope for the best. Instead, we developed what we dubbed the “Viewpoints Explorer.” Embedded across the site, this “smart library” remembers the topic of interest a user selected in previous web sessions. That saved topic of interest follows the user around the site and merges with the subject of the existing page to display a small set of hyper-relevant content.
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Working alongside Finastra’s international team of brand managers, product owners, digital marketing experts, and content teams, we unveiled a totally reimagined Finastra.com that fully embraces Finastra’s new brand and its vision for the future. Content, user experience, and the Drupal foundation powering the site were built from the ground up—so Finastra can attract customers across the globe, educate buying teams, and, ultimately, enable business growth.
Not ready? See how we approach improvement engagement.