Yellow’s
Digital Evolution

Problem Statment & Goals

As one of New Zealand’s most well-known brands, the Yellow Pages were looking to offer customers business solutions that would allow them to thrive in a contemporary setting. Traditional print directories were a core part of the business, but no longer provided customers the results they were looking for. To support customer needs, 3 key goals were put in place.

  • Understand new and existing customer needs

  • Bring world-class marketing solutions to NZ SMEs

  • Empower sales through tailored customer journeys

The Approach

To deliver these goals it was important to understand customer needs and perceptions. Based on insights, a strategy was put in place to modernise the brand and invest in new digital products.

Running in parallel, teams rebranded the business to “Yellow” and developed digital solutions that supported customer objectives. This was done being considerate of the current product suite and allowed for both print and online directories to remain. This was important as they still played a large part in the lives on New Zealanders and brought revenue into the business.

Solution

I worked to develop Yellow’s brand through the creation of brand guidelines, reinventing the iconic Yellow Pages, and launching a new-look website offering customers a seamless experience across all touch-points.

The website moved from being a directories service, to an online platform that connects SMEs to business solutions. By providing new products which were supported by learning guides, video tutorials, and tailored purchase journeys, Yellow was able to successfully launch complex solutions to customers through intuitive user journeys.

Branding was created that modernised the perception Yellow and its offerings. The clean, fresh, and contemporary colour palette combined with consistent icons, illustrations, and component styles, allowed all new assets to reflect where the business was heading.

Deliverables

  • Brand development including logo, brand guidelines, colour palette, illustrations, icons, UI components,

  • New responsive website

  • Education and learning collateral for customers

  • Customer purchase journeys for complex digital products including Google Adwords, SEO, Display Advertising, Website Creation, Social Content, Online Directory listings, and more

  • Rebranded print and online directories including the iconic Yellow Pages and White Pages

Google Adwords purchase journey snapshot

Outcomes

Yellow now have a deeper understanding of customer needs and are able to shape their product development strategy to reflect these insights.

With a new range of solutions available, small New Zealand businesses are now able to connect with clients and grow while saving time and money. This approach allows Yellow to continue empowering small business into the future and help them to thrive.

Yellow has been successful in retaining customer trust through the transition, and is now able to provide multi-channel marketing solutions to customers. Through surveys and customer insights, the perception of the brand saw a measurable lift and is now considered to be a leading digital marketing partner for NZ SMEs.

Learnings

The new digital products being provided to customers were often hard to understand and when sold as individual products. They also did not provide full solutions for business needs in isolation. We discovered that businesses needed a combination of products to achieve their goals. By bundling products to better reflect what a business owner was looking to do, we were able to increase sales and improve the value being delivered to customers.

Our research early on focussed on user needs, but could have gone further to uncover how to best deliver the products being asked for. This resulted in more time being spent rebuilding the website to deliver bundles further down the track.

By connecting qualitative and quantitative insights with iterative prototypes we could have created better efficiency and delivered more value faster.

  • Design team | UI Design - Ekaterina Liebich, UX Design - Stephen Ticharwa, Illustration - Henthoiba Nongmaithem

    Engineering and Technology | Front End Developers, Technical Advisors

    External agency partnerships | BigCommerce advice and support

    Marketing | Head of Marketing - Chantelle, Marketing Manager

    Product | Head of Product, Product teams - Kimberley Lim, Christopher Winder

    Leadership | Board of directors, Chief Marketing Officer - Bruce Pilbrow

  • Since leaving Yellow, they have updated the branding and website. This continual evolution and growth is great to see, but also means that the current live website does not reflect the work I did with my team.

    If you’d like to see more from the work we did, please reach out for a full walk-though.