Product Overview
Bloomberg BNA is a subsidiary of Bloomberg L.P. and a source of legal, tax, government, and business information for professionals. As senior designer, I led the effort to create a marketing site template, which was used for Bloomberg BNA and its major businesses: Bloomberg Government, Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Environment.
Bloomberg / ux design
What is Bloomberg Government? The answer is not immediately apparent to customers. And, unfortunately, Bloomberg Government’s marketing site was not helping much.
Many know Bloomberg as the person (Michael Bloomberg), the media giant (Bloomberg News), the global company headquartered in NYC (Bloomberg L.P.), or the business intelligence platform (Bloomberg Terminal). To make matters even more complex, in 2017 Bloomberg Government merged with Bloomberg BNA, a subsidiary of Bloomberg L.P.
With these challenges in view, I led an effort to redesign Bloomberg Government’s marketing site. Its goal is to serve as the online face of the business and as the front door for the product. It hosts over 57,000 users daily.
The redesign focused on achieving greater clarity in its presentation of the business, increased flexibility for its various uses across businesses and time, and deeper emotional impact for generating sales leads and increased client usage. The redesign was so well received that Bloomberg BNA’s leadership requested that it serve as the template for all of its businesses (Bloomberg Government, Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Environment), including Bloomberg BNA itself.
The Design Problem
Originally, the project arose out of problems with Bloomberg Government’s marketing site. (1) Bloomberg Government had recently merged with Bloomberg BNA. The site needed to be rebranded to reflect its new identity. (2) Bloomberg Government had long struggled with making known to the public that it serves two major clients: government affairs professionals and government contractors. The site’s language was too subtle and vague (“For You”). (3) The marketing site not only struggled to serve as sales collateral, it also made signing in to the product difficult. This was a serious issue, since clients were paying thousands of dollars per year for a service they had difficulty accessing. (4) The site’s other major call-to-action, to request a demo, was lost amidst the navigation. If we could encourage more prospects to click, we could generate more sales leads. (5) Overall, the site’s language and imagery was off-target. It put too much emphasis on government, rather than on the benefits of our service. The homepage, for example, displayed a video with scenes of DC and a large Bloomberg Government logo, but no description above the fold. Overall, we needed to unify the brand, present our business in a more compelling way, and make our product easier to access.
Key Stakeholders
For this project, I was not only tasked with redesigning the marketing site, but I was also given the responsibility of launching the effort. First, I set up meetings with key stakeholders to understand their needs. This included the business leadership, the marketing team, and the development team. Second, I obsessed over the customer. In addition to my usual UX research practices, I pored over existing marketing materials to deeply understand our business. In order to elevate our brand, I sought to design with an eye toward highlighting the benefits of our service. Third, I attempted to eliminate potential roadblocks. For example, I mediated a conversation about branding between the marketing team (who wanted consistency across Bloomberg products) and the design team (who wanted to make use of fresh but company-approved colors and visual elements). Overall, I served as the champion for all key stakeholders – especially the prospects and clients – helping our teams to reach a consensus about our brand.
Design Tensions
Out of the research phase, I discovered that the solution needed to strike a balance in several ways. First, although we needed to communicate that our business serves government-related professionals, the emphasis needed to be on the benefits of our service. After all, our business does not serve the government directly. Rather, we bring intelligence and innovation to those seeking to understand and influence Washington. Second, while our brand needed to be consistent with the larger organization, it also needed to highlight its unique value for our particular clients. It would do no good for prospects to confuse Bloomberg Government with the Terminal, Bloomberg’s ubiquitous business intelligence platform. At the same time, it could not stray away from its identity as a business of Bloomberg BNA and as an industry product of Bloomberg L.P. Third, the site needed to help generate sales leads and, at the same time, increase product usage. In other words, the redesign needed to keep both prospects and existing clients firmly in view. Fourth, the site needed to show that we served government contractors as well as government affairs professionals. We could not fail to represent either business. Fifth, we needed to highlight our competitive advantages, but without making them seem contradictory. Our competitors would often say that all we do is news aggregation, but this was not the case. Bloomberg Government provides original reporting, consistently breaking news from Capitol Hill. At the same time, we are unmatched in the intelligence, data, and tools we provide. Overall, the solution needed to be clear and flexible enough to strike a balance in all of these areas.
Design Solution
My design prioritized clarity, flexibility, and emotional engagement. First, in order to achieve clarity, I eliminated drop-downs from the navigation. I also made the navigation “sticky"; i.e., stick to the top. My goal was to expose the major sections of the site at a glance and on every page. I brought the major CTAs, sign-in and request a demo, to the forefront. I also aimed for clarity by creating blocks or sections on every page. Each section was to feature a bold headline, a description, a call-to-action, and a related image. This would enable our message to be loud-and-clear, nuanced, actionable, and engaging. Second, I aimed for flexibility, knowing that the needs of the site could change over time. The blocks on each page could easily be swapped out for other blocks in the future. Likewise, images of products were presented in standalone hardware. Since the actual products were continually being improved, this would make future updates to product images easy to achieve. I also aimed to make the design flexible with regard to its experience across various screen sizes. I presented designs for desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile. Finally, I aimed for emotional engagement. Using inspiration from Bloomberg resources, I wrote the copy and provided the images for the design. I presented Bloomberg Government as innovative and focused on the client. Overall, the prototype inspired the company leadership. After a few rounds of user-testing and feedback from the rest of the team, it was approved and went into production.
Company-Wide Impact
Bloomberg BNA’s leadership was so pleased with the design, that they requested that all of its businesses receive the same treatment. Thus, my design served as the template for Bloomberg Government, Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Environment. Even Bloomberg BNA itself was redesigned according to the same template. This is a testament to the design’s clarity, flexibility, and emotional power. The design enables each business to communicate its unique advantages to its clients; while, at the same time, show its connection to the larger Bloomberg organization.