Behind The Scenes of The New Versori Website
Welcome to the new versori.io! We are excited to share this project that our team has been working on for the past few months. Find out why the old website needed an update, how our team came together to deliver the new site and what we learned along the way.
The need for a new website
Scalability
Things are moving fast at Versori and you may have recently seen that we joined the Y Combinator Winter 2023 cohort.
Versori is no longer a startup and it was time the website reflected that. As the development team have worked tirelessly on Switchboard, the website needed a structure that would showcase the platform’s extensive capabilities.
The new website is organised into various groups, including solutions, sectors, product and company, which will all be built upon in the next coming months.
As anyone that works for a tech company will know; if you want to innovate, you have to iterate!
Brand Evolution
As a designer, creating a new brand identity can be both challenging and rewarding. After creating the logo and basic brand elements in early 2022, the whole identity has developed considerably in the past year.
Rushed brand identity isn’t meaningful and meaningful brand identity isn’t rushed.
It was important to incorporate some colour into the black and white palette and we’ve done this through beautiful teal gradients and pops of yellow for the Switchboard pages.
Showcasing Switchboard
Leading up to the launch, it was exciting to reveal some of the UI elements throughout the pages. Working with a platform as extensive and ground-breaking as Switchboard there is a certain level of pressure to summarise what it can do. Playing with the idea of boards and workflows really helped communicate the ease of using Switchboard in a visual way.
The lightning bolt symbol in the logo also provided a lot of inspiration in the website design. It was fun to subtly incorporate into different areas of the design to give a consistent feel to the Switchboard pages.
The tools we used to build the website
Copy
As with most of our worded documents, we used Notion for planning and writing the copy of the site. It’s the perfect tool for structuring content and collaborating with your team on a project.
Design
Our designers use Figma as their design tool of choice. Just a few of the benefits of the platform include:
- Figma works in all browsers
- Auto-save and real time updates
- Great for team collaboration and targeted feedback on projects
- Your files can be accessed on any computer, anywhere in the world
- Fantastic prototyping capabilities.
Once the website designs were completed and approved, the next stage was the build.
Build
The website was built using Webflow, a fellow no-code tool. Similarly to Switchboard, it offers complete customisation when it comes to website design, all without writing a single line of code.
As the developers were fully focused on the platform build, Webflow was a fantastic solution for our designers to build the site themselves.
Any designers that are interested in website design, I’d highly recommend checking out Webflow. They have lots of free resources (including Webflow University), so anyone can learn out to develop websites without having to learn code.
5 Tips for building a new website
Building a new website from scratch is no mean feat. It can feel so overwhelming that you don’t know where to start or avoid building it all together. Here are some valuable tips our team learned along the way:
1. Break it into small chunks
Creating a brand new website is a huge task. Start by breaking it down into the content, design and build. Then go into each of these and break it down even further. This will make the project much less intimidating and easier to tackle.
2. Set achievable deadlines and goals
Once you’ve broke down your tasks, set some deadlines for when you expect each one to be finished. For example, when it comes to the design it might take 2 - 3 weeks to create the wireframes. Put together a timeline to increase productivity and keep the project moving along.
3. Be really clear about your unique value proposition
If you’re confused about your product’s USP, then so will your users. Communicate with your team and make sure you are really clear about what makes your product unique and the edge it has over competitors.
4. Decide on clear CTAs
A call to action (CTA) is a vital part of your site. It should be a short instruction that you are giving to visitors of the site, usually something like ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Shop Now’. A good rule to follow is asking yourself, would you know what is going to happen when you click the CTA? If it’s something vague like ‘Use Product’, users might be confused about what will happen and most likely not click. Be short, direct and relevant
5. Don’t be afraid to delegate or ask for help
Although it can be tempting to micro-manage and want to do everything yourself, it will soon become overwhelming. Don’t be afraid to ask your colleagues to help with planning, ideas, copy or any other tasks that will speed up the project and alleviate your workload.
Thanks for stopping by!
We appreciate you being here and taking a look at the new home of Versori! There are big things to come that we are excited to share with you. Keep an eye on this blog for behind the scene stories, industry insights and our latest product launches.