Introduction

First Bank is a 100-year-old, 4th generation, St. Louis based family-owned bank managed by the Dierberg family.  I was tasked to lead the development of their new website from design to deployment.
    
Objectives

Conduct departmental discovery sessions and contextual inquiries to establish brand and content direction.  Lead research efforts to determin cohort representation across the entire customer base.  Use the services of a design agency to build out the new website using the content management system DotNetNuke.    

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Overcoming Barriers

Working cross-functionally with marketing, operations, C-suite, legal, compliance, audit, PMO, HR, IT, 20 departments and 100+ stakeholders.  Regional and geographic opinions on what constituted the First Bank brand.    

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Execution

The site was constructed and deployed ahead of schedule by 6 months.  Segmentation research was critical to establish a new identity that effectively separated the company in a highly commoditized industry.  Worked successfully with a diligent PMO Team and in a waterfall environment.  Used design thinking approaches and human-centered design principles.  Built personas and journey maps defining the user journey and desired experiences.    

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Results

A fresh, engaging, intuitive website.  Simplified the product categories to encourage upsell and cross sell opportunities.   Humanized the Dierberg name with a warm, inviting feel.  Established new brand guidelines, a sense of purpose, and a targeted appeal website that improved all areas of the user experience.