Illinois Lending is a local lender to the Chicagoland area with half a dozen brick and mortar stores, providing personal loans for those with low or no credit. They came to us in order to establish their brand and their digital presence from scratch.
Redesigning a brand, whilst creating strategy and digital outputs that would make both a short-term and long-term impact.
Splitting the digital goals into specific projects to be accomplished in a a waterfall approach.
A comprehensive approach that has allowed Illinois Lending to stay true to its brand throughout continued growth.
As a brand we came to understand that what Illinois Lending helped customers to do was to move forward. Nowhere was this more apparent than in dealing with individuals struggling to gain a loan. With two arrows facing forward and one back, it paid homage to the history of a situation, but put an emphasis on moving past that.
The brand style took the professional nature of the lending industry and attempted to put a softer appeal to it. With so many harsh realities that Illinois Lending customers had often come to be a part of, it was meant to signal a potential partner to trust. By utilizing the green and blue hues that would stand out from the competition paired with unique illustration creations, the brand identity system was formed.
The design and development of the website took into account that while getting the new brand style out into the marketplace, what was of primary concern was driving conversion. Therefore the site leveraged a content-driven approach that helped to bring consumers to the resources that would best educate and help them determine whether or not partnering with Illinois Lending was the right move for them.
Creating the first-touch experience that most consumers would get with Illinois Lending, it was important for the website to leverage trust factors that the company had established within the marketplace, LLT working to convey those through high fidelity designs.
This included things such as reviews, visiting a physical store and answering consumer questions.
Understanding the benefits of personal lending for those that were having a tough time being approved, meant bringing illustrations to simplify what would have been an otherwise text-heavy implementation. These illustrations stemmed from brand consistencies and styles established at the onset.
Designing and developing a custom cost calculator helped to rocket visitor interaction and meant that customers could get a realistic view of what their loan payments would look like with Illinois Lending versus the competition.
While the visual appeal of the website was amazing, what really mattered was connecting consumers wanting a loan to the experts at Illinois Lending. This materialized in LLT building an online application that fed into Illinois Lending’s loan pipeline.
Besides the branding, web design, UX / UI and web development aspects of the project, LLT also worked to provide portal design and development for existing customers and working to generate new customers through marketing campaigns.
The real success of the project came with blending Illinois Lending’s business strategy with a comprehensive digital strategy based on tangible metrics. From branding to UX / UI to marketing the relationship has provided a lasting ROI for both LLT and Illinois Lending.
