The Brief
MSCI, the leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community, turned to us with the challenge of heightening awareness of their thinking in the sustainable investment realm. The climate has never played a more important role in informing investment choices than now, and MSCI’s goal was to be the guide for investors to realise the opportunities when it comes to putting their organisations on a road to net-zero carbon emissions.
Their experts and advisers have written hundreds of guides and articles on how investors of all levels of understanding can take further steps down this road. The challenge for us: how do you take all of this expert information and create a digestible and accessible home for it.
A knowledge-hub website that can transform dense whitepapers into interactive pages, provide clear user journeys and ultimately give our audience a reason to come back was what we knew we had to pull off. The challenge….the fact that MSCI’s ‘Road to Net-Zero’ campaign was only 6 weeks away from brief. We knew we had to mobilise fast.
Getting into the minds, shoes and eyes of the users are the key to getting any website right. The content can be the most informative but if it’s not displayed in an easy-to-digest and easy-to-navigate fashion, crucial pieces of information can be lost. To make sure this part of the strategy was correct, we created 6 personas indicative of the audiences that MSCI are targeting. This ranges from Chief Sustainability Officers at global investment firms who already have a good understanding of the opportunities that lie ahead, to investors who are dipping their toes into the sustainable investment world for the first time. These personas and user journeys became the backbone of everything that was to come thereafter – from designs, to user experience, to animations and the way that copy was presented. If we couldn’t answer “yes” to “will this get our audience to think/feel/do what we want from them” then we knew we’d have to redefine our approach.
In addition to all of the design and build work, we also set out to create bespoke content for the website – ranging from hero video content, explainer videos and composite imagery.
6 weeks – of which we knew at least 2 would be dedicated to in-house content population, browser testing, amends – really meant we had 2 weeks for strategy, wireframing, designing, digital brand development, and 2 weeks for the front and back-end development. It was a challenge but one we knew our dedicated team can pull off. With incredibly tight project management, and daily check-ins with the client we were able to get from capturing requirements and designing the strategy, to getting sign off on wireframes/designs, and then moving those designs into build sprints.
The Delivered Site
The end-result – a custom-themed, SEO-optimised website created on WordPress VIP with the powerful combination of ambient video, interactive tools, rich imagery and a considered and well executed mobile experience, scoring 80+ on Google PageSpeed insights. Heavy browser and device testing helped us iron out a number of glitches leading to an ambitious website build being delivered on time to coincide with the launch of MSCI’s Net-Zero marketing activities.
Visit the website at https://www.net-zero-hub.com/
