Q9 Networks are one of Canada’s leading providers of outsourced data centre services with facilities in multiple locations across Canada. In 2015 they appointed a new President and CEO and with bold new plans for the future needed a new website to help spearhead their evolution and expand their reach into the US. Once known for being overly rigid in practice, the new Q9’s focus was to be on innovation, flexibility, and delivering custom-tailored solutions. In the redesign of their website we sought to match this new mentality with a bold new colour palette, eye-catching graphic treatments, and a much more engaging user experience. And, with an accelerated 8-week timeline, we pulled off what ended up being a really successful redesign in a short amount of time.
Project Date
August 2016
My Role
On this project I led design and strategy, established the style direction, and assisted with project management.
With such a tight timeline, we developed our wireframes around existing content and focused our attention on presenting things in new and engaging ways. This included restructuring the way their service offering was presented, developing a company timeline, and better presenting their case studies (to name a few).
Here are few selections from the wireframes we put together (Managed Services & Cloud, Data Centres):
Style
Branding & Style Tile
I started work on style with a quick refresh of the Q9 logo, opting to pair a light blue (in place of their existing yellow) with their dark purple-blue. It served to tone the contrast down and make the brand feel more approachable and harmonious. I also cleaned up some uneven lines and made some adjustments in alignment to help make the logo feel cleaner and more precise overall. Using some of the shapes from the logo, I started playing around with angular geometric patterns and triangles specifically, which became a design motif moving forward. With three main pillars in their service offering (Data Centres & Co-Location, Managed Services & Cloud, and Network Solutions) the triangle became the perfect representation for their core strengths and their “rock solid” reputation in the industry.
For typography, I went with Adelle Sans as a headline typeface and Effra for body copy. Both sans-serifs, they were selected for boldness and readability. I wanted headlines to be attention grabbing and crisp and long form copy to feel light, softer, and easy to read. I expanded their existing colour palette and added a couple key colours to inject some liveliness and energy. For UI elements and iconography, I followed suit with bright hits of colour and simplistic, geometric shapes. Imagery was selected for brightness and natural feel.
Here are a couple sections from the Style Tile I developed:
Design & Content
Responsive Mockups & Content Writing
Using the Style Tile as a jumping off point, we developed our full page designs around the premise that the site needed to feel both fresh and clean but also dynamic and engaging. We paired bold, angular panels of colour with very simple and open sections of white and used geometric patterns to inject movement and energy across the site. The site feels professional and high-tech but also slightly playful and exciting, which is pretty unique in the IT sector.
From a content perspective we paid special attention to organizing information into digestible chunks so that users would be able to find exactly what they were looking for as easily as possible and not get too overwhelmed with information. We also organized page structures so that the most important content from an engagement point of view was given prominence. There are strong calls to get in touch across the site and since launch, Q9 has seen a surge in website engagement.
Here are a couple of the pages that we designed (Home, Data Centres, Single Case Study, & Managed Services & Cloud):
Results
Sizeable Increases In Traffic
With a website that finally matched their reputation in the industry, Q9 saw sizeable increases in traffic to the site and engagement across the board, helping them land some substantial new business, most notably a major US client that signed a contract for somewhere in the neighbourhood of 500 million dollars.
Designed & Developed by Filament Creative.
Strategy: Trevor Davson, Matt Hryhorsky, Lindsay Trevors Content & Copywriting: Stephen Megitt, Trevor Davson Design: Trevor Davson, Matt Hryhorsky, Lindsay Trevors Development: Dave Fox, Taha Jalil, Brock Whitbread Project Management: Matt Hryhorsky, Trevor Davson
