HearFirst

Being equipped with the compass of knowledge has the power to create incredible change. HearFirst is dedicated to transforming individuals and teams by developing skills, knowledge and confidence via a range of in-depth tailored training solutions.

Without a doubt, HearFirst is a well-established and respected business that continues to make a positive contribution to the growth of inclusive interactions in a wide range of organisations.

A lot has changed since the original HearFirst brand and website was launched in 2002. In that time, HearFirst has become synonymous with ensuring the evolution of diversity and inclusion is upheld in a commercial and organisational setting. However, the gap was widening between the overreaching visual and digital identity of the business and the current brand strategy and its objectives.

Founding partner, Julie Ryder, engaged with Aly Sébastien to undertake a brand refresh, coupled with a new website build, via an immersive and collaborative project aimed at delivering the transformation required to create new commercial opportunities for HearFirst.

The brand’s visual identity had not evolved to reflect the company's current position in the marketplace or its existing relationship with the audience. In addition, the website, which was now outdated, lacked the core fundamentals of modern web design practices such as responsive design and the implementation of practices to raise accessibility standards.

In addition, it was unclear if the needs of the user were still being met as these hadn’t been identified, evaluated and addressed accordingly for some time. We could no longer be assured that the brand and website were relevant and fit for purpose. Consequently, this meant that there were untapped business opportunities could be gained.

In order to evolve, remain as a market leader and reflect a more up-to-date image of the company, HearFirst required a brand refresh. This was initiated by implementing strategies designed to dive deep into the heart of the brand personality, allowing fresh ideas to surface.

As making big changes to a brand can be scary, it was important that each step was taken in solidarity. This process was made possible by undertaking a series of collaborative workshops together. The outcomes provided valuable insights that could help form the basis of actionable points when redefining the brand’s visual identity, tone of voice, and methods of communication.

Any new work for HearFirst needed to be underpinned by deep qualitative and quantitative research in order to remove assumptions and minimise the risk of developing the wrong solution. In order to build a fully functioning responsive website, that will service a user’s needs, a range of UX research methods were implemented throughout the project. A mix of collaborative workshops and design sprints helped us to gain the valuable insights required in order to make informed design decisions together.

What resulted from this body of research and design work was a fresh visual identity and a collection of strategies that would help us to align the brand's objectives whilst retaining a user-centric perspective.

With a new scope of new work, the next step was to turn a number of these creative and strategic assets into a functional user-friendly and responsive website integrated into a powerful Content Management System (CMS).

Webflow provided a cost-effective solution that would give the content editors the control they required to manage their content and ensure that the site stayed up-to-date.

Additional benefits of a Webflow CMS integration is that this platform is flexible and extendable when business requirements arise. In addition, Webflow's CMS plans offer a secure and stable hosting package, backed up by dependable customer support.