Cadenza.
Social media at your fingertips.
Helping small businesses build an impact brand by creating unique, high-quality content for different brands. A digital branding company needs a clean, eye-catching design to advertise their company to potential customers.
Cadenza Social
WEB DESIGN FOR CLIENT
Cadenza Social is a digital marketing company that prioritizes customizable content, direct communication with designers, and affordable prices in a month-to-month subscription model with no cancellation fees.
According to the founders Will Brown and Sydney Hancock, "everyone in the digital marketing industry seemed to overcompromise and underdeliver, and they were charging an arm and leg! There were simply no affordable social media options for inexperienced and smaller companies, so we founded Cadenza Social."
Cadenza Social hired me as a UX designer for their new desktop and mobile website to reflect a new design identity — professionalism, friendliness, and informational.
TIMELINE
This is a freelance UX design project that I was hired to complete over the summer months of 2022. The rough scope of the project was a 30 hour contract project that involved initial meetings to discuss the brand / site identity, prototypes and mock-ups, a new design system, and a final hi-fi design to hand over to the Cadenza Social's front-end developer.
PROCESS SUMMARY
I worked closely with the founders of the company, Will and Sydney, to set goals and brainstorm ideas. We hosted periodic check-ins and reviews to make sure my design progress was on the right path and within the scope that they were envisioning. When the Figma design was approved by the co-founders, the file along with the design system was sent to the developer.
Social Media at your fingertips.
FROM THE CLIENT
"After searching for months to find the right web designer, we finally lucked out when we hired Amy Zhang. She turned our website from an embarrassing, clunky mess to an informative, high-converting tool that we're proud of! Clients consistently comment on the new website, describing it as crisp, professional ,and well-designed. Before, I would dread sending leads to our website, but now, it's our primary sales tool. If you are a small or medium-sized business, I would highly recommend Amy Zhang without hesitations — you won't be disappointed with the results!"
— Will Brown & Sydney Hancock
SCOPING THE PROJECT
Brand Identity
After a long discussion with the co-founders of Cadenza Social, we narrowed down that we wanted the overall look & feel of the site to be playful, calming, and inviting, without sacrificing the professional and straight-forward content.
I translated this conversation surrounding brand identity into some design-related bullet points to help guide the design process:
Generous-use of saturated colors based on the Cadenza Social logo: lime green, teal, and bright blue coupled with neutrals; use of gradual gradients
Wave-shaped graphic gestures across the site — used as section dividers and background decorative elements
A consistent 8px fillet around background boxes and a 1px graphic line
Find and Replace
Another exercise the team and I did was to go through the old version of the site and point out the pros and cons of its current state. Cadenza Social had recently hired another designer to revamp the site but was not satisfied with the job that they had done.
FROM THE CLIENT
"When I looked at our site after the first revamp, I couldn't pinpoint exactly why I was unhappy with it, but something about it just felt unclear and off. Amy was crucial in helping us figure out what elements were working and what to cut."
— Will Brown
DESIGN SYSTEM
Cohesive Designs
For this project, I was tasked with designing for both the desktop and mobile version of the site, which have slightly different design systems. Cadenza Social gave me free reign to adjust the typography, colors, and graphic elements to make a more compelling site.
FROM THE CLIENT
"The design system that Amy created was extremely helpful to convey to the developer the specifics of the designs. We didn't even consider asking for it to be made, but were so glad that Amy took the initiative to develop it to ensure cohesiveness."
— Will Brown
GRAND GRADIENTS
Gradients are integrated into the background of the new site design, invoking a calming aura and a pleasant draw for the eye.
CUTTING CORNERS
A big point of change was removing shadows and unnecessary borders on content boxes. This makes the site appear modern and sleek.
*old site
NEW SECTIONS
While going through the older site and researching other similar ones, I noted some possible additions to the home page to improve the appeal to customers — one example is suggesting the addition of six concise bullets about why customers should use Cadenza Social.
ONE-STEP READ
I wanted to simplify the process of a potential customer understanding how Cadenza Social works. The old version of the site required the user to hover or click on each box to reveal the steps, which hindered the possibility of a quick scan.
*old site
WAVY STRIPS
The old version of the site also implemented strips with a wave pattern, but the design was rigid and did not provide enough contrast. My new version of the site introduced more organic waves with translucency overlap and graphic lines.
*old site
HEADER HIERARCHY
To give the most important text more of a clear hierarchy, I created a header + subhead design element that stays consistent throughout most of the sections.
ADEPT ADAPTATIONS
Cadenza Social wanted to equally prioritize their desktop and mobile site, but over 60% of their consumers were using the mobile site to sign up for a subscription. Because of this statistic, we paid special attention to the mobile version of the site and cut certain elements to captivate site visitors with a concise message.
FINAL DESIGN
For Mobile & Web
The final design maintained Cadenza's aesthetic vision for their product while considering consistency, quality, and visual design.
Cadenza Social, Desktop.
Cadenza Social, Mobile.
Cadenza Social
A web and mobile site to help connect small businesses with impactful brand creation that provides unique, high-quality content.
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Hope you enjoyed coming along for the ride, and I truly appreciate you taking the time to check out my work! You can reach me at amyzh425@gmail.com — I'd love to chat with you.