Scope of Work
We envision the following phases for the new brand and website:
- Onboarding
- Branding Phase
- Website Phase
- Implementation and Rollout
- Ongoing Partnership
To ensure the best possible outcome for the CUPE EWBT, we like to involve industry subject matter experts wherever possible. We are pleased to partner with respected benefits communication consultant, Valerie Travis of Bespoke Benefit Solutions. Our scope of work and project plan below, as well as our budget, includes Valerie’s expertise and time on this project.
Onboarding
- Kick-off meeting with the core CUPE EWBT representative(s) – this is a meet and greet, where we'll confirm who will be involved and when
- Stakeholder ID – Because we take a user-centric approach, we propose establishing roles and user groups that are involved in various capacities:
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- CUPE EWBT Point of Contact for ongoing communication
- Project Champions – 3-5 core project team members that support at key checkpoints to ensure alignment with goals of each phase
- Full Approver Group – the full Board, CUPE EWBT team, and outside partners with interest in the project
- Member Advisory Team – if possible, several CUPE education worker members who would provide input at a few key points in the project
- Project Microsite – We set up a project management site and give access to the CUPE EWBT Point of Contact and Project Champions for full visibility on the project status at any time.
- Initial communication to project stakeholders – We suggest that we send an introductory email to all project stakeholders to share the project overview, as well as when and how they might be needed during the project.
Branding Phase
Branding Philosophy
There are many factors to consider when creating (or recreating) a brand:
- Does your brand need to appeal to multiple audiences or different audience segments, now or in the future?
- What common demographics and psychographics unite the largest audience groups? Are all the brand elements optimized to reach those audiences and their needs and preferences?
- Does the colour palette meet accessibility standards for contrast, while still providing depth and dimension?
- What emotions are evoked by the colour palette and how does this influence the actions we want the audience to take?
- Are fonts both distinct but also readily available as web fonts or Google Fonts for technical reasons (e.g., work in designs and in Microsoft Suite, avoiding custom fonts that increase page loading speed)?
- Is the image and icon direction contributing to a distinct brand, but not so unique that you need all custom images for a high cost?
- Is the brand overly general in an attempt to be relatable to everyone, or the opposite problem of being overly targeted and alienating?
- Does the brand seem too familiar with other related partners, causing market confusion?
None of these questions should be the CUPE EWBT’s concern, rather, this is our role in the process. We work through a series of guided questions and exercises that help us learn what's important to you and your members, and your future vision. We then apply our expertise to produce a brand vision that achieves your organization’s and members’ goals and needs. This process is both an art and a science, with every choice based on what the CUPE EWBT wants to achieve and who you need to reach.
Examples of How We Apply Our Branding Philosophy
Actuarial Analytics
Audience Inputs: The primary target audience is HR leaders from medium to large organizations. They are frustrated by large annual fluctuations in their benefit plan’s costs, and don’t want to have to continually switch carriers to chase the best pricing. There was also a secondary audience of CFOs and other finance professionals who might also want to see benefits costs managed.
Company Inputs: Actuarial Analytics is different from others in the industry because they apply powerful analytics tools to support clients with making sustainable decisions for their benefits program. They focus on health and wellness goals and provide hands-on client service.
Brand Outputs: The previous colour palette was dark blues with bright baby blue and pylon orange, which was brash and masculine-leaning, which did not achieve the desired brand personality of calm, wise support for a mostly female audience. The new colour palette kept the blues and softened the orange to a coral colour, creating a calmer, more feminine feel.
The logo was great, and didn’t warrant changing, especially since keeping it meant keeping some existing brand equity. We recommended a font pair of a beautiful serif with a clean sans serif to create a sophisticated look that appealed to both target audiences.
OLD
NEW
Think Ahead Financial
Audience Inputs: The primary target audience consists of diverse Millennial and Gen X adults who are tired of feeling like a number with their banks. They want non-judgmental guiding advice for their financials as they navigate life transitions. Although the company wanted to target both men and women, they conveyed that in many cases, men are making the majority of financial decisions in households.
Company Inputs: Think Ahead Financial is a small team of caring and thorough financial planners who aim to holistically guide clients through their life journey, such that they’re always thinking ahead. They value working with clients of diverse backgrounds, adopting an alternative, culturally-sensitive approach.
Brand Outputs: The colour palette chosen reflected the owner’s desire to have the audience’s interactions with the company feel natural and authentic, and it skewed into darker shades to appeal to a more masculine audience.
The logo was a real win, incorporating the company name abbreviation (TAF) with imagery of bridges, symbolizing the connections that the financial planners are making for their clients.
Imagery chosen included culturally-diverse people in the target audience age ranges to help see themselves in the brand and website.
Branding Process
Our process for rebranding the CUPE EWBT would consist of the following steps:
- Schedule Branding Workshop(s)
- Pre-Branding Survey – We send ahead a survey to all project stakeholders to gather a variety of information about awareness of the CUPE EWBT and its mission, and the members and what they want and need
- Branding Workshop(s) – 3-5 hour in-person workshop with Project Champions (and perhaps a few more) to complete our 3-part branding exercise (Brand Heart, Messaging, and Visuals)
- Brand Vision development – The Futurpruf team goes away and develops a brand vision, incorporating feedback from our benefits communications partner, Valerie
- Brand Vision presentation – We present the strategic vision for the entire brand - visuals such as logos, typography, colour palette, images and icons, as well as personality traits, brand voice, and even data visualization (how to display charts and tables)
- Brand finalization – Feedback and changes are incorporated, if applicable
- Brand assets – We package all brand assets into their final format and deliver them to the CUPE EWBT
- Comprehensive brand guidelines outlining every detail of the brand
- Logos files, including all versions and file formats
- Font files
- Image and icon library, including at least 25 images and 25 icons suitable for brand designs, obtained with valid commercial license
- Draft Templates (English) creation and presentation – We would create and propose templates for:
- PowerPoint
- Word, including a separate letterhead
- E-signature
- Email (OFT and or email platform)
- Business card
- Templates finalization – We incorporate any changes to the template and send for translation to then create French versions. We would then package and deliver all templates and ensure training on each, as needed.
Website Phase
Recommended Website Approach
Platform
Futurpruf recommends the WordPress CMS platform for CUPE EWBT for its versatility and scalability, content management capability, and user- and SEO-friendly infrastructure.
Scalability & Versatility
Content Management
User and SEO-Friendly System
WordPress is endlessly scalable, and for that reason is the platform of choice for many of the biggest professional services brands. WordPress is a future-proofed choice.
WordPress is also a highly flexible platform, preferred by many developers for both its modular architecture and its support of extensive customization. Our preferred approach for clients is to adopt hybrid customization, meaning the parts of the site that need to be regularly updated, or added to, are templated (templates that we build for the client), whereas the main pages that need more ‘wow’ factor are more ‘hard-coded’ and would therefore require a developer to edit.
WordPress excels in content organization through its use of categories and tags. This taxonomy system allows for logical and hierarchical structuring of content, facilitating easy navigation for both website administrators and viewers.
A key benefit here is its capability for creating custom content categories (e.g., newsletters) that allow for a specific templated design for each category. This would mean that an internal CUPE EWBT team member could take ownership of adding specific content to the site without having to worry about website design.
On the front end, WordPress’s exquisitely responsive and mobile-optimized design capability creates a powerful user experience. Then, WordPress also offers a user-friendly back-end interface that empowers even non-technical users to easily manage and update content. It also includes a comprehensive user role management system, where site administrators can assign specific roles (such as editor, author, or contributor) to control access and permissions, ensuring a secure and organized content creation process.
WordPress is also inherently SEO-friendly. Its clean code, user-friendly URLs, and the ability to customize meta tags contribute to better search engine visibility. Additionally, numerous SEO plugins are available to further enhance website optimization.
Best Practices
We recommend the following website features to all our clients:
- Highly responsive mobile-first design to suit the majority of website visitors coming in on a mobile device.
- Web-based content approach, which means placing all content on the website in native web format rather than PDFs. This ensures its searchability, linkability, and responsiveness.
- Meets international accessibility standards such that website visitors are able to access the information equally. Being mindful of text contrast, keyboard navigation-friendly layout and the use of ARIA landmarks for assistive technologies, alternative text on images, and captions on videos all helps to ensure accessibility.
- Templated CMS collections, whereby common content types are templatized to allow non-technical users to easily add that type of content to the site without worrying about its design.
- Video media, for a number of reasons:
- Visitor engagement – Videos are inherently engaging and can convey information more dynamically than text or static images. The combination of visuals, audio, and motion captures users' attention and encourages them to stay on the page longer.
- SEO benefit – Video content is favored by search engines, and pages with embedded videos are more likely to appear in search results.
- Social media shareability – Video content is highly shareable on social media platforms. As users share videos, it can lead to increased brand visibility, reach, and engagement across different social channels.
- Content balances SEO and user experience, as many sites optimize solely in one direction. While search engines are trying to align their algorithms with what people truly want, there is inherent friction there. It is possible, but a challenge, to truly optimize a web page for both humans and bots. Doing so gives big benefits.
For CUPE EWBT, we also recommend PDF download capabilities. It is likely that many of your members will appreciate having the information in print format, in which case, a PDF is a preferred method of controlling the layout and appearance of the information in printed form.
Website Development Process
Futurpruf’s process for the CUPE EWBT website design and development includes the following steps:
Website pre-survey
We will send a survey to all project stakeholders gathering feedback about their needs with respect to the website and what’s on their wishlist for the new website.
Website workshop and requirements gathering (virtual or in-person)
Similar to the branding phase, we place high value on gathering comprehensive, high quality inputs that then inform our recommended approach for the site’s architecture and design. This ensures that we are creating a website that aligns with CUPE EWBT’s mission, values, and vision.
Architecture/site mapping
The Futurpruf team, in collaboration with our benefits communications consulting partner, Valerie Travis of Bespoke Benefit Solutions, will determine a new site architecture that we believe best supports the needs of website visitors.
Wireframing (with checkpoint)
We then mock up the proposed layout of the new site in what’s called “wireframing”, the process of creating a simplified visual guide that outlines the structure and layout of a website or application, focusing on content sections and functionality before the design phase. At this stage we present our proposed architecture and wire frame to the Project Champions and gather feedback to incorporate.
Content and specialty media (with checkpoint, then translation)
With an approved wireframe in place, we create the entire site’s content and send it to the Project Champions for approval. Again, this step is completed in collaboration with Valerie to ensure that critical benefits information isn’t missed. Our content will also include the script and general direction for a site video, which we will design once approved. Finally, when the English content is finalized, we send it for translation.
Design and development
Once content is approved, we begin building. During the website's design and development phase, the approved site architecture, wireframes, and content guide the creation of the actual web pages, involving activities such as graphic design, coding, database development, and integration of interactive elements to bring the envisioned user experience to life. We are sure to incorporate key SEO criteria such as meta descriptions and image alt-text. We also ensure that the site is behaving as planned on all device types: desktop, tablet and mobile.
QA and UAT
During the Quality Assurance (QA) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phases, the website undergoes rigorous testing to identify and rectify issues. The Futurpruf team conducts the QA, which focuses on technical aspects, ensuring functionality, performance, and security. The UAT involves end-users (Project Champions and Member Advisors) who go through the site to validate the site's features and usability, ensuring it aligns with their expectations before launch.
Final updates
The final step is to incorporate feedback from the UAT phase and prepare the site for launch.
WIREFRAMING
CONTENT
Implementation and Rollout
In the final stages of the website build, we will present the CUPE EWBT with a launch timeline and plan that includes:
Training
- 1x Session (recorded) – We will provide a 1-2–hour interactive training session for all stakeholders needing to add or edit content on the back-end of the website. This session will be recorded and the video will be provided to the CUPE EWBT to make available for anyone who didn’t attend the session.
- Documentation in English and French – During the training session we make available supporting training documentation that content admins can use as a guide long after the session is finished. We will make this documentation available in both languages.
Launch communication campaign
- Communication strategy – We will work with the Project Champions to confirm which audiences should be notified of the new brand and website, and how. We typically recommend a 2-email sequence, of which one is a pre-launch teaser, and the second is a “now live” communication for the day-of. Aside from emails, we often support clients with developing social media posts, press releases, and even internal launch activities such as a member event or new swag (such as water bottles).
- Campaign assets in French and English – Once the strategy is final, we create content and design for the campaign assets in both languages.
Migration
- Arguably, the website migration is the most critical part of the implementation of this project. During the migration, we change the CUPE EWBT’s domain records to point at our hosting provider and the new site. This can result in the website being down for a short time, which is why we conduct the migration overnight during low traffic periods. To minimize risk we create backups of both the current and new site before performing the migration, and rely on rigorous testing during the QA phase to catch any potential technical issues.
Ongoing Partnership
- We would like to be an ongoing partner for the CUPE EWBT for a period of 3 years (and beyond). This would include:
- Website hosting and back-end maintenance/updates – All websites require ongoing maintenance. Our hosting is through GoDaddy hosting, with server configuration, security, and backups managed through cPanel admin. We also regularly perform site maintenance, such as updating plugins, updating security (SSL) certificates, and checking for broken links.
- Backups and security monitoring – We would ensure daily backups for back-end systems, with weekly backups of the full site (all content and design). Perform security audits to identify vulnerabilities. We regularly implement the latest security best practices, including using strong passwords and two-factor authentication.
- Monthly website analytics – The gold standard for website analytics is Google Analytics. Our build of the website would include support with setting up GA4 (if not already set up). We will also regularly monitor site performance metrics, such as page loading speeds.
- Website support – While the CUPE EWBT team will be equipped to add and edit content on templated pages on the site following their training, the Futurpruf team would propose to include 20 hours of support annually, which could involve editing existing pages or adding new pages or content.
As a full-service marketing team, we can further support the CUPE EWBT with almost any marketing need long-term.
Project Management & Communication
Collaborative Project Management Approach
We believe that the best approach to a project of this size is to break it down into manageable chunks with clear goals and timelines. We recommend applying agile methodology to this project which means:
Creating a project overview and itemized requirements list
We would create a detailed overview that lists all the project requirements, including the assets to be designed, language specifications, and any specific design guidelines or branding requirements. This forms our backlog from which to pull for each sprint.
Sprint planning
We would conduct weekly sprint planning meetings to prioritize activities for each period of time — known as a sprint. We consider the overall project timeline, available resources, and dependencies while assigning tasks for each sprint.
Daily stand-ups
We will conduct brief daily stand-up meetings within our team to discuss progress, challenges, and any adjustments needed. With daily updates on tasks, issues, and collaboration, it’s easy to then communicate important or urgent updates to the CUPE EWBT point of contact.
Design iteration
Within each sprint, our team will work on the assigned tasks, focusing on creating designs and assets in both English and French and ensuring all other criteria have been met. We will collaborate closely with the CUPE EWBT point of contact and other partners such as Valerie and the translators to ensure the layout and design are coming together appropriately.
Continuous communication
We maintain clear and open communication channels between the CUPE EWBT and external stakeholders throughout the project. We regularly share progress updates, present completed designs and content, and seek feedback to ensure that the project aligns with expectations.
Adaptation and flexibility
We embrace change and are prepared to adapt the project's direction based on feedback and evolving requirements. Agile methodology encourages flexibility, allowing for adjustments to be made throughout the project lifecycle.
Our agile process is designed to ensure timeliness and open communication with clients. We offer to host weekly calls with our client’s representative, the CUPE EWBT point of contact, at the end of each sprint. And, as outlined in the project scope, we regularly present our work to the Project Champions to ensure we don’t get too far off course.
Communication
Every Futurpruf client is given access to a member of our team to contact at any time. Most of the time this will be Melanie in her role as relationship manager. However, we will temporarily assign a different team member to ensure continuity of service during illness, time off, etc. Because we are a smaller team, we are in regular communication and meet regularly to keep abreast of the status of current projects.
Keeping the CUPE EWBT informed is a key element to effectively managing this project. We build every client a project dashboard that captures the overall project activity list, the current sprint tasks, items for review, and at-risk items. Our project management tool also includes a place to house all project-related communications in a central location (versus email). However, we understand that some clients are already using communication tools such as Teams and Slack, and we are pleased to adapt to using existing tools.
Risks and Risk Management Strategies
It’s important for CUPE EWBT to work with a partner that understands risk and how to manage it. Here’s how we would ensure we prevent common risks from derailing a successful outcome.
Risk
Delays holding up the entire project
Risk Mitigation Strategy
We use a proven branding and web build process and agile methodology to execute the larger project in phases and sprints. We build a project management dashboard and then plan every sprint by pulling priority items from the project list/backlog. If one item is holding up an asset, we plan the next sprint around different items while working to eliminate the roadblock.
Risk
The new brand or website doesn’t meet the expected quality standards or fail to address the requirements
Risk Mitigation Strategy
We truly believe that if all stakeholders are aligned on the inputs, that there will be natural alignment on the outputs. Our comprehensive branding and website workshops allows us to confirm the design direction, overall layouts, and goals prior to beginning the labour-intensive creation process.
Risk
Ineffective communication between Futurpruf, CUPE EWBT and other external stakeholders that lead to misunderstandings, delays, or incorrect deliverables
Risk Mitigation Strategy
At their core, branding and websites are about communication. We understand the value of “internal marketing” and work hard to establish clear communication channels, including regular progress updates and a live project dashboard. We encourage open and transparent communication and feedback between CUPE EWBT and all members of our team. We proactively identify risks that may impact project scope or timeline.
Risk
Scope creep leads to delays and increased workload
Risk Mitigation Strategy
We clearly define the project scope and roles at the beginning and involve CUPE EWBT stakeholders in the process. We will regularly review and reassess the scope during our sprint planning and communicate any necessary changes or additions to CUPE EWBT. We also use a change control process whereby we flag all scope changes in our client dashboard to manage scope changes effectively.
Risk
Final website doesn’t see anticipated volume of use
Risk Mitigation Strategy
We consider all user barriers prior to beginning any design. We will offer a user experience audit and accompanying recommendations to CUPE EWBT to reduce this risk.
By being proactive and implementing these mitigation strategies, the project can effectively address common risks, minimize disruptions, and ensure smooth progress throughout the agile project.