Description:

PredictHQ is a big data API company powered by machine learning and operating in a technically complex space. For an API-first company who targets data science teams, it was difficult to create a visually compelling design and good user experience that showcases the abstract nature of their offering.

The challenge with PredictHQ's website was to tell their data story in a way that can be understood by a wide range of user personas - not just by data scientists and engineers, but also marketing execs and CEOs. How do we show people the value of what PredictHQ offers when most of the decisions makers in that audience don't understand the technical basis it's built on?

We tackled that challenge first with careful content design and info architecture. How do we tell the story of their data pipeline - aggregation, standardization, filtering, enrichment, ranking, correlation, and prediction - in a way that anyone could digest? We broke down their existing content, reframed it, rearranged it, and added new concepts to fill the gaps in our narrative.

It became quickly evident that we'd have to rely on animated illustrations to bring those abstract concepts to life - to tell the story with images and motion rather than technical text. We brought on board an expert animator as a design partner and integrated illustration as a key component in our design strategy. No opportunity was wasted to ensure that every visual aided the comprehension of our technical content. We also commissioned custom iconography so we could have unique and consistent symbolism to support that story throughout the site.

When illustration was too abstract a tool for the job, we relied on graphs, maps, code samples, and case studies to connect those complex concepts to real-world data and evidence-based results. It was important to demonstrate how PredictHQ data was used in the wild to build trust for new customers.

The website design also went hand-in-hand with a brand refresh for PredictHQ. It offered a chance to reconsider how type, colour, and visual style represented the company in a digital-first environment. We aimed to strike the perfect balance between technical and approachable. PredictHQ’s branding needed to reflect the thriving industry leader that they were becoming, without looking like every other generic, homogenised tech company on the block.

The resulting toolbox of type, colour, atomic styles, custom illustration, motion, and data visualisation became a new purpose-built digital language that would serve PredictHQ now and into the future - not only for their website but also in product design for their suite of web apps and data tools.

The new website design has resulted in:

* 68.7% increase in avg time on page – much more engagement with the content!

* 72.39% increase in organic traffic – SEO didn’t take a dip as is common after major website redesigns. Instead, it rapidly climbed!