TownWeb has recently changed its branding to better communicate a more relevant brand promise. We still offer the same high-quality web design services to towns and municipalities across the United States.
TownWeb has recently changed its branding to better communicate a more relevant brand promise. We still offer the same high-quality web design services to towns and municipalities across the United States. However, we wanted to update our image to be in line with improvements we have made to our content management system (CMS), the new products and services we are offering to our municipalities (like the new TownOnline payments for credit card processing) and our level of 24/7/365 support. If you’re curious about why and how we rebranded our image, we hope this post helps answer those questions.
TownWeb has established an excellent reputation among our customers and we continue to get good referrals. Unfortunately, we felt that our character just wasn’t shining through in how we presented ourselves. Our logo was a bit outdated and our color scheme a little uninspiring. This year, we started to redesign our product after feedback from customers indicated that the TownWeb admin section was proving a bit too complicated and complex to navigate and update. We also decided to rebuild our website to freshen up our image and make the interface more interesting. Essentially, we want to be more relevant to our audience.
Our clients are towns, villages and cities across the US and we wanted our branding to reflect our focus across these community by being a one-stop shop for their web-based services. We’re coming up to our tenth anniversary in 2017 and wanted to celebrate our success as the largest municipal web design provider in Wisconsin. Not only are we the market leader in our home state of Wisconsin, but we’re also gaining popularity in many other states.
TownWeb’s community-oriented approach works all over the country since we’re the only provider who creates a website that gets better over time. The internet landscape has evolved with new technology and mobile usage has changed the way residents access information. The sheer variety of devices and access points mean that residents can access websites anywhere and at any time. It’s not enough to just have a mobile-friendly website; municipalities need to stay on top of newer technological advances and provide timely information. People expect to have the information they need at their fingertips and will usually choose the convenience of a mobile device to quickly look up something about their town when the need arises. Citizens also expect the information on official municipal websites to be completely up-to-date, otherwise they will give up in frustration and find it elsewhere.
We wanted the new branding to reflect that we are one of the leading providers of municipal software. Our web design solutions remain the easiest to use for clerks and we are constantly innovating to make sure the sites continually remain relevant.
Our new product needed a strong foundation, but it was unclear whether we should base it on the one we already had, or create a new one from scratch. We decided on the latter option, feeling that our old blue and white logo design didn’t convey the community aspect of our focus and had too much of a metropolis feel with its silhouette of tall buildings and skyscraper. It was fine when TownWeb started out in 2007, but we felt that our identity and image have evolved since then.
The color palette and logo seemed like an obvious place to start. The newly-designed TownWeb logo features two symbols of American patriotism in one: an eagle blended with a waving flag. Likewise, we adhere to American values of being the best we can be and rising above the competition. We accomplish this by being the only provider who creates a website that continually evolves and improves. We believe the best logos are simple. They don’t try to convey too much on their own and leave room for all the feelings people will accumulate about the brand over time.
We realized that if our rebranding was to be successful, it needed full commitment. Therefore, although the new color scheme and logo are the cornerstones of our brand identity, they aren’t enough on their own. Next, we turned our attention to typography and chose a contemporary font family called “Aller bold” and “Aller light”. Its clean and unfussy appearance represents TownWeb’s professional yet approachable business personality.In addition to our logo, we placed a new image on our homepage that emphasizes the importance of mobile-friendly design. A town is "growing" from a mobile phone. The image shows the features of a small town (farms, churches, etc) which is representative of the projects we have in "bread and butter" states.
Quite simply, it conveys our ability to put your town on the web and make it accessible to everyone.We also include a map of the United States that visually pinpoints our presence across multiple states. It’s accompanied by a short text describing how TownWeb has served over 400 municipalities over nine years. We emphasize our speciality in municipal websites and how we make the clerk’s life easier. Our landing page also shows an image of how our new dashboard looks, along with a portfolio example and testimonials from happy customers. Finally, we keep our most recent blog posts in plain view at the bottom of the page so you can easily access useful and relevant information.
We recently overhauled our Web Design Dashboard to improve its functionality and thought it would be a good idea to launch it alongside our new branding. We created the dashboard in line with our new brand’s imagery. It carries our new predominant colors of red, white and navy which reflect our style of America’s national colors.
Our new brand reflects:
We achieved our new brand by:
Let us know what you think of our new branding – we’re interested in your thoughts!
