Building credibility through visual design
Commission Factory Homepage Redesign
A redesign of the largest affiliate marketing network in the Asia-Pacific
.png)
Affiliates are typically influencers with a large social media following, but can also be owners of blogs or niche personal websites. While growing the number of affiliates is important for CF, the size and engagement rate of their followers contributes more directly to CF's revenue.
Influencers' primary goal is to monetize their digital channels by working with brands (large or small) to promote their products.
CF not only facilitates connecting Affiliates with Advertisers, but also resolves other pain points for affiliates such as:
Largely corporate advertisers who seek an alternative pathway to reach their intended audience aside from traditional B2C marketing.
Limited marketing budgets and increasing pressure to deliver a higher ROI means that advertisers are naturally risk-averse. Advertisers need to quickly and accurately measure the performance of their activities, consolidating large amounts of data for reporting, as well as to 'double down' on what's working.
Advertisers familiar with affiliate marketing understand the impact a large influencer can have on their business, allowing them to reach out to customer segments that may have been previously out of reach; nonetheless they are wary of trying untested routes to market, with red-tape typically limiting who they can engage with.
The original design brief places a focus on improving its targeting for potential Advertisers.
In particular, CF wanted to "adhere to a more corporate look and feel" to appeal to corporate and enterprise Advertisers while still being relatable to Affiliates who are often individuals or small businesses.
As mentioned in the above section, corporates don't actually want to see more corporates. Airlines like Etihad want to see travel vloggers, fashion retailers like Showpo want to see younger adults that speaks the language of their target market.
These companies understand that there are people out there who can better connect to their audience than themselves - which is why they turn to affiliate marketing.
The focus for CF therefore may not necessarily be to look or to feel like a corporate business as the brief suggests, but rather appear to be credible.
Multiple CTAs in the hero section (and across the page) featuring the same prominence dilute the urgency and focus that a CTA should bring.
Since both CTAs above funnel to the same signup page, it may be useful therefore to consolidate to a single CTA which then caters for the different target customers on the following page
The existing website did not meet Google's accessibility standards. In particular, contrast between the body text (#A4AFB3) and the white background (#FFFFFFF) is too low, making it difficult to read. Additionally, this also penalises the website's SEO ranking in search results
Some sections of the website speak to different audiences simultaneously (for example in the below, "know where all sales came from" is speaking to advertisers, while "get paid every week" speaks to affiliates).
This can contribute to a loss in conversions as confusing messaging may lead users to think it is not the right product for them.
While typically SaaS startups and businesses often go with a Sans Serif font, a Serif font can help communicate a more established brand that can connect with enterprise customers while not alienating individuals and smaller businesses.
Some examples of companies that utilise the same style despite not being a large corporate themselves include Whereby, MailChimp and Medium in which a serif font commands more authority and trust in their products.
While CF's blue colour is part of its brand identity, it's been used more sparingly in the resdesign, featuring only on icons and as a style effect on images. The orange colour was also replaced and instead, shades of grey are used to portray a more corporate feel while still being playful with the CF blue colour when needed.
Advertisers (and especially enterprise advertisers) more directly attribute to CF's revenue. The redesigned website therefore places this audience as a primary target with its messaging.
The website's structure broadly follows this layout:
1 - What does Commission Factory do in a short sentence
2 - Eye-catching section that extends beyond the fold to encourage scrolling down
3 - Introducing pain points
4 - Resolving introduced pain points with product features
5 - Call to Action
As previously mentioned, corporates don't want to see more corporates. Instead, these advertisers need to be enticed by who it is that will be promoting their brand, who may be very different to who they are as a company.
Featuring affiliates front-and-centre in the hero section not only speaks to the advertisers, but also to other potential affiliates who may be drawn to some of the more successful influencers on the platform, and can act as a trust badge for them to also sign up.
Right below the hero section are some of the features offered by CF's product. These were previously further down the page and grouped tightly together next to an image.
As referenced in the Website Audiences & Goals, these pain points can be significant to an advertiser, and therefore important to show prominently and early before "asking" the user to commit to read even more about the product.
At this stage, an advertiser browsing the website could be considered "in". They understand what CF does, they know what pain points they're trying to solve, they've decided these pain points are relatable to them and have decided to find out more.
At this point, it's good to explain the how - which is where the product features are then introduced and several calls to action are laid out after each product feature. As recommended in the Existing Website Audit, there is a single CTA for both affiliates and advertisers.
Finally, some of CFs most popular brands are presented to communicate trust to other similar businesses. On the original website, only 6 were featured at a time and changed after each refresh, which meant that there was a chance an advertiser wouldn't see another advertiser in their same industry.
Instead, here they are all featured together, fading towards the bottom to imply the many other popular brands that have already trusted CF with their affiliate marketing efforts.
One of the most direct, tried and tested methods for measuring the impact of the proposed changes is through A/B testing. Commission Factory aims to grow their affiliate network by sign ups from both advertisers and affiliates. Measuring the effect of these changes on the website's conversion rate therefore may provide an indication to their success.
Additionally, rectifying some of the mentioned accessibility issues should theoretically improve the website's SEO ranking, and therefore traffic. This is due to Google's search algorithm ranking pages with poor accessibility lower on search results