Gemma Newton, Zopa’s Brand Manager, gives some insight into the journey behind Zopa’s December 2016 redesign.
The challenge
Zopa is a force for good in its industry, driven by making money simple and fair for customers, and disrupting markets where customers are traditionally under-served. However, we are still fairly unknown as a brand, and the financial services industry is lacking in trust.
With over 12 years’ experience of providing better value loans and investments for UK customers, Zopa has experienced rapid growth in the last 2 years. Our bold plans to launch a bank demonstrate our determination to continue disrupting the finance industry, but until recently, our brand positioning, look and feel and tone of voice have not reflected our future ambitions. We needed to refresh our brand.
- The logo, while an homage to the acronym for Zone of Possible Agreement, was difficult to read and suffered low recognition.
- The typeface and colours schemes didn’t reflect the vibrant, bold culture of our fast-growing company.
Zopa has developed an award winning application process and uses the latest technology and machine learning techniques to make the loan application process as simple as possible.
So the challenge was to not damage work that had been done on conversion, while rebranding the website and all customer touchpoints to reflect Zopa’s values and future plans.
How did we do?
- A bold new logo, visual design using photography and abstract icons, a distinctive typeface and a consistent tone of voice were rolled out throughout the entire website and customer journey.
- No changes in borrower conversion pre- and post-rebrand – no small feat as many brands experience a drop in conversion after making significant changes to their look and feel.
Our brand reflects our culture
We started by listening to our customers, to understand what they care about when looking for finance products, and the reasons that they chose Zopa. Our customer-facing teams were vital in providing insights, and we also carried out focus groups with potential customers. We identified that:
- Customers have low trust in their banks, but are even more fearful of the unknown when it comes to finance companies.
- Recognition and reassurance matter as much as transparency and ease of use.
We involved the whole company in workshops to define our values, and we then defined Zopa’s position as a consumer champion powered by radically personalised services . Why? Because finance is personal and people’s relationship with money is deeply emotional. Being treated like an individual is essential when building trust.
By inviting customers and potential customers into the office to demonstrate our work in progress, we could make sure that what we were building suited their needs.
We worked as a cross-functional task force of developers, copywriters, compliance and product managers. This meant that we could work iteratively and efficiently.
In order to minimise the risk of damaging conversion on our website, the decision was made to initially make only cosmetic changes to the website, keeping the functionality and customer journeys the same.
Key outcomes
- The newly branded website and all customer touchpoints were launched simultaneously on one day, with no technical or customer impacts reported.
- We received some great feedback from customers.
- Our conversion metrics were not impacted by the change and continued to be market leading.
- We have set the stage for future development of our products and customer journeys.
Visit Zopa’s YouTube channel to hear from the team behind the brand refresh.