A brand new look, a new brand feel.

My role

Creative Director 
Discovery, Research, Naming Strategy, UX, Art Direction, Consultation.

My TEAM

Michelle B, UX Design
Audrey T, UX Design
Julianne V, Brand Design
Ali G, Brand Design
Adam L, Brand Design
Hero Digital, Agency

As Creative Director at Cisco Meraki, I helped oversee one of the heaviest lifts an in-house team can take on: a complete redesign of our corporate website, with a brand refresh chaser. We wanted to make a big splash with this, no “MVP”. We implemented a completely new backend, a new tech stack, and a new user experience geared toward optimizing the customer journey and gathering leads more effectively for the business.

This was a full court press. Everyone was heavily invovled from my team, our web team, all the way up to the CMO.

As a creative leader, I tried to emphasis the importance of not only having a cohesive creative strategy, but also executing down to the last detail for the most delightful customer experience possible.

The Problem Statement

Our outgoing website put in its time and did its job, and was ready to ride off into the sunset. Standing throughout tremendous growth, we were faced with a rapidly maturing marketing strategy that had simply outpaced our website's dated infrastructure.

This was no vanity project- we were ready to infuse our website with a significant upgrade. In addition to migrating to a more robust CMS, we had to implement more advanced and effective analytics, conduct a thorough UX, design, and SEO audit, as well as manage all stakeholders involved.

The Strategy

Before jumping into the redesign itself, we developed some style goals to represent Meraki visually. Not exactly a re-brand- more of a brand refinement- we had to agree to a common look and feel that we could apply to all newly developed components. Switching from a bespoke hand coded site over to a CMS didn’t just mean a fresh coat a paint, but instead fresh thinking. As a creative leader, I was steering this ship from point A to point B and as with any website redesign, the devil was in the details.

The creative process could only absorb so many opinions so navigating multiple teams and departments across the company required that I create strong alignment and an ego-free zone.

Our products' strength lies in their deft combination of ease-of-use and power. This is not an easy balance for our engineers to maintain, and I wanted to respect and honor that simplicity throughout the design of the marketing website as well. My team and I developed all new clean illustrations and infographics, an intuitive UX and navigation, and a much more seamless user journey. We also used inclusive photography and bold and inviting colors throughout the design for clear wayfinding and engaging content.

The Build

As the Head of Design & Web, my goal was to align the business goals and the brand goals with what our customers were seeking from us on the web. This required constant learning, testing new ideas, talking with users and understanding the data. I hired a new Head of Web to take on all core responsibilities for the website and together we partnered with our agency to bring our vision to life.

Working directly with our brand-new CMO, I lead a hybrid team through the entire project, setting several ambitious goals along the way. This was no longer a lift & shift or a simple face-lift. Switching gears early in the project, we decided on a full redesign. Not only did we refresh our palate with bold new colors, strong photography, and upgraded our typography stack, pairing Sharp Sans and Roboto, but we also took a deep look at the IA and navigation of the site and even the overall messaging strategy.

Together with my team, we overhauled all iconography, build out a new navigation, redesigned the homepage and all product page templates. We also created all-new solution pages to more prominently feature Meraki as an actual platform, not simply a line of products.

Typography

Sharp Sans Display No. 2

Roboto

COLOR PALETTE

Apple Green
#67B346

Indigo Blue
#5576D1

Supernova
#FFCD00

Alabaster
#F8F8F8

Mine Shaft
#393939

Icon Set

Key Takeaways

With this website, we sent a shot over the bow. This was the first of many major steps forward, not only for the web, but I used the site to pilot a total refresh of the brand, worked with our Strategy and Content teams on new messaging, and paved the way for a different methodology around how we message our products.

This also removed several blockers our Marketing team had been dealing with for years, allowing for much more rapid development of online campaigns, new pages, new strategies, and most importantly- experimentation.

Early indicators reveal a 20-25% boost in the overall conversion rate as well as a decreased bounce rate and a better average time-on-page. Mobile compliance is nearing 100% of pages and load times are up to 1000% faster than the old site.

Featured Work