Navigant consulting
To contrast my earlier blog about the Easton Associates Consulting firm, I have decided to do case study on another consulting firm with a drastically different website. This site uses its features along with a much different look to show potential clients, investors, and employees what their company can offer that others can’t. First the site has a very friendly appearance due to the soft warm colors and cartoon imagery and design. It makes the company seem very approachable. The primary nav, selected state, and search bar have irregular rectangles framing them which doesn’t make the site seem disorganized or immature but instead a more creative feeling, like thinking outside the box which is an important quality for a consulting firm to have.

home page

There are two navigation systems on the home page, a prominent primary nav system with its own bar background, larger font, and prominent selected states. The primary nav is geared towards potential clients. The primary nav is logically grouped into categories that potential clients would find the most important such as home, industries, services, professionals, and knowledge center. The other navigation system is geared towards the other background information that potential investors and employees would want to know such as about NCI, investor relations, careers, regions, and contact us. I think the navs are split up this way because the website’s main focus is to attract cliental and build a bigger base which is the goal of all consulting companies, therefore their site would be arranged this way as well. For the primary navigation systems, they all have drop down menus for the secondary navigation. For the industries and services links the content is also a list of the secondary navigations along with a short description about it. However, the other drop down menus don’t appear once you click on the primary nav link, therefore the drop down is the only access point to the secondary navigation. Surprisingly for such a large site there is never really any confusion where you are in the site due to the clear headings on each page along with the green rectangle selected state of primary navigation system. The primary navigations stay on every page so there is never a point where you cannot get back to the homepage.
The site has a fairly deep architecture. There are many primary navigation links that each has their own long list of secondary navigations. Due to the many levels the architecture is not flat; you must travel through the primary navigation systems to get around. I think the deep architecture shows how comprehensive the site is which in turn positively reflects the company as a complete, comprehensive consulting firm.
There is definitely a hierarchy of typography apparent. The headings are clear and separated from the content by a colored bar and picture. Even though content contains a lot of text, the spacing is great and allows for easy reading by the user. The headline of each page also has an effect that makes the headline glow against its background which just further highlights and separates the headline. Each level of the hierarchy is separated by color, size, and weight making the distinctions very clear and very legible.

Industries: construction page

The labels of the navigation are pretty clear. The only one I was uncertain about was knowledge center. I didn’t know what to expect but once I clicked on it, it was what it said. It was a virtual interactive knowledge center containing a library, hot topics, upcoming events, and continue legal education. Any confusion about what the knowledge center was was quickly dismissed with a short intro video of Navigant’s chief marketing officer explaining the contents and features of the knowledge center.

Knowledge center page

The structure of each page remains fairly the same throughout the site. The top bar of the two navigation systems, search bar, and Navigant logo stays the same throughout with the content below changing. The content has a consistent theme but each page has a different layout of a large cartoon drawing and textual content. I think this is very creative, it makes the site dynamic and continues to draw my attention on each page. The focal point of any give page would definitely be the fun large cartoon drawing in the back ground or below the heading. This use of imagery adds a great deal to the design of the site. The cartoon does not really provide much information about the content but is a colorful entertaining compliment that keeps each page lively and friendly. In addition, the irregular cartoon rectangles combined with the pictures definitely help the site and company seem approachable and makes me feel comfortable with them. There are some icons indicating some secondary navigation but all are clear.

Industries: healthcare page

There are many colors on any give page. The base color is a soft light orange that uses other soft warm colors to generate the comfortable feel of the site. The colors are beautifully used as backgrounds to separate all aspects of the site including the navigation systems, headlines, body content, and search bar. These colors were chosen to make the site and company more approachable and friendly. As a company I would want to work with this consulting firm based on the warmth of their site which is largely due to the color palette.

Services: investigations page

The objective of this site is to primarily attract potential clients and secondly to attract investors and potential employees. It also provides new information to current clients and investors on how the company is managing. There is a search option that is on every page as part of the top bar. The search option lets you search for key words in all the pages of the site, which allows you to be pretty specific on the information you are looking for. There are many features on this site that I found extremely useful. On all the informational pages there was a virtual briefcase on the right side that would allow me to store all the information on that page and continue searching the site. This is extremely useful considering that vast amount of information on the site and creating the ability to just have one download at the end of my visit to extract all the information.

Zoom in on the virtual brief case

There was not really anything confusing about the site. I also cannot think of anyways to improve it. I believe it is an extremely well done website for a consulting company. The innovative look and features of the site directly speaks about the consulting firm. This firm is not only friendly and approachable, but also creative, comprehensive, and thorough, all feelings generated from their website.