ICS is celebrating its 15th year, and in 2017 we have also launched our new website, a rebrand and two new services in a project that saw us team up with the award-winning digital marketing agency, SQ Digital.

In this post, we outline the main areas of the project, which resulted in a brand new website to showcase the contractor accountancy services that we have now offered for many years, and also our new SME Accounting and ICS Payroll Bureau services.

An Audience Centric Approach

We centred the rebrand and website user experience (UX) around our four key audiences:

  1. Contractors that can benefit from ICS Accounting and ICS Umbrella
  2. Business owners that can benefit from ICS SME Accounting
  3. Businesses that can benefit from ICS Payroll Bureau
  4. Recruitment agencies looking to refer their candidates to ICS

We started by selecting four clear colour ways so that our audiences can quickly identify where they are within the website and establish which information is relevant to them.

To support this client-centric approach, we established a more professional brand persona. As a result, the graphic characters, which have served us well over the past few years, have been substituted for real world imagery that conveys our position as a professional, compliant and trustworthy organisation. The ICS logo has remained unchanged, and the circular motif from the logo was carried into the design for the rebrand.

The colourways and revised brand persona have been rolled out across ICS marketing communications, including business cards, email signatures, email templates and downloadable guides.

 

The New ICS Website

HOMEPAGE:

This new approach was replicated on the ICSUK.com homepage.

The old homepage and branding was centred around our core proposition – accounting for contractors.

The new homepage uses the above-the-fold area of the homepage, which the user can see when they land on it, to clearly and simply filter them to the area of the website that is relevant to them.

 

New Calculators

The ICS Contractor Take Home Pay Calculator has been an important and useful tool for users of ICSUK.com for a number of years. It enables a contractor to quickly and easily establish their take home pay for a particular project, taking into consideration the various contractor accountancy options they have.

 

For the new website, ICS worked with the experts at SQ Digital to create a series of aesthetically pleasing calculators with a slicker user experience. The calculators have also been optimised for mobile (a vital consideration in a world dominated by mobile search), with larger slider buttons that are easier to accurately set with your thumb or finger on a smartphone or tablet. We created a contractor take home pay calculator, a candidate take home pay calculator for recruitment agencies and a payroll calculator for businesses interested in ICS Payroll Bureau.

 

 Optimised for Mobile

ICSUK.com is fully optimised for mobile, taking the information from the main website and serving it in a way that better suits smaller screens. To view the mobile version, simply visit www.icsuk.com from your smartphone or tablet – you’ll soon see the difference!

Get In Touch

If you are a contractor, recruitment professional, SME owner or require a payroll bureau service, then please call us on 0800 195 3750, email newbusiness@icsuk.com or reach out to us on Twitter @ICScontractor.

To speak to SQ Digital about any digital marketing support, advice or projects, visit www.sqdigital.co.uk, call 01524 580 777 or email hello@sqdigital.co.uk.