Intertec, a leading Munich-based IT firm, partnered with the company I worked at to both upgrade their business model and to design their new website as a comprehensive IT, marketing & design hub, reflecting their upgraded model. This case study highlights how user-centered design both elevates user experience and strengthens brand positioning.
The central challenge revolved around addressing the evolving needs of Intertec's clientele. They sought to minimize feedback loop costs by consolidating their IT needs under one roof. Previously, clients had to collaborate with multiple agencies from various domains, leading to increased inefficiencies. My objective was clear: position Intertec as the go-to full-service agency capable of providing end-to-end solutions, encompassing ideation, design, development, maintenance, scaling, and marketing. This required not only meeting current client expectations but also winning the trust of prospective clients seeking comprehensive IT support.
The project kicked off with Intertec partnering with our company to become a full-service agency. However, stakeholder interviews were delayed due to a busy management team. My company’s management’s initial attempt to jump-start things with initial wireframes hit a snag. Incomplete requirements and differing priorities among stakeholders created roadblocks. Some championed the importance of marketing in the new model, while others saw IT as the company's foundation. The following are very early design concepts that proved to be wrong for what Intertec needed.
Stakeholder interviews brought clarity to the project. Here's the conclusions I managed to draw:
I leveraged insights from the initial user personas created for the early design concepts and created three in-depth profiles representing Intertec's key target audiences. One of these personas, Gustav, reflects a core client segment and received extra attention to ensure I fully understood his needs.
I mapped the current user journeys based on the personas. This further clarified pain points and opportunities such as building trust among website visitors by showcasing current and previous clients, providing social proof in the form of client testimonials and reviews, showcasing expertise etc. This way, I could design a user experience that truly meets their needs.
User journeys gave me the big picture, but I wanted to zoom in to the most specific needs! While it is not very usual to create user stories for website design I felt that they would help me empathize with user types who have objectively different motivations and problems than me and the team. So, I created user stories based on each persona, diving deep into the specific needs of each type of client. They helped me understand the pain points each user type needed to solve by partnering with a company such as Intertec, which later guided my design decisions for the website.
To reflect Intertec's upgraded full-service agency business model their new website needed a clear and concise explanation of all their services. I brainstormed user-friendly language to describe Intertec's one-stop-shop approach, ditching the technical jargon for plain English. This ensured the website's non technical visitors would understand the full range of services Intertec now offers and how they could benefit from a comprehensive partnership.
With all of the above in mind, I tackled the website's information architecture. With the navigation I focused on clearly and intuitively telling the story of Intertec's approach: their services themselves, their tech stack, the industries they have deep expertise in (from the personas and user journeys I knew that Gustav wants a partner with experience in his industry, for example) as well as showing specific use cases in the form of case studies. This way, users (read potential clients) could easily understand what Intertec offers and how it could benefit them.
Before diving into fancy visuals, I started with sketches! This quick and dirty approach let me and the team explore different visual and layout ideas without getting hung up on details. This phase was all about brainstorming and getting the core look and feel right before diving into the finer points.
Intertec's end-to-end approach was the website's central narrative. To bring it to life visually, I facilitated a brainstorming session where the entire team explored creative concepts. We presented several unique ideas to the stakeholders, and one truly soared!
It used sticky notes for the hero testimonials transforming into a technical drawing and then a colorful paper plane, symbolizing a seamless client journey under Intertec's one-stop-shop umbrella - from ideation to scaling and maintenance. Check it out (it’s scrollable):
In this phase, I adopted a modular design approach. This way, I could create different pages quickly and consistently.
Time to build! I used those modular building blocks I had created to assemble the website efficiently. Additional designers were brought onboard to assist with the inner pages and speed things up. Things were running smoothly until I hit a snag on one page. Designed by multiple people under a tight deadline, it didn't quite match the overall style, as it can be seen below. Although it wasn’t a pleasant feeling to have such a mistake slip through, the issue was quickly fixed to ensure a consistent look and feel throughout the website.
In the end, this project was a success. By successfully meeting the established deadlines and objectives outlined in the initial phase, I delivered Intertec a modern website that effectively communicates their story and showcases their new business model.
This project solidified two key learnings for me:
Moreover, it taught me, as a team lead, the critical importance of overseeing every detail, not only in my own work but also in my team's, as even with the best intentions and talent, misalignments can occur due to time pressure and communication gaps.
