Everest - Usability and Brand review (v1.0)

The colour palette used is a simple monochrome with the
addition of an accent colour – formerly aubergine purple,
now a light royal blue - and a green call-to-action style. The
colours are consistently and logically used throughout the
site.

Many modern sites, and especially ones created with
simplicity and elegance in mind, make use of spacious white
(or off-white) backgrounds and black or dark grey text as
the basis for the design, which provides a solid clear basis to
build in brand design elements without resulting in a
multicolour mess. Apple’s website is the pinnacle of this
modern monochrome design and Everest’s site equally
appeals and looks sharp, measured and considered.

Colours can provoke a huge variety of subjective reactions.
The aubergine colour could be seen in a positive light, being
rich, elegant and sophisticated. Brands like Cadbury, the
Premier League and Hallmark use similar purple colours to
represent luxury or prestige. Shades of purple can be used
to give a sense of boldness and creativity, especially in
industries known for playing it safe.

The aubergine purple, used as Everest did, also has
drawbacks, apart from the lack of brand heritage. It can
become dreary and lifeless when desaturated or used in
varying shades – unless it’s a bright purple, it’s not a colour
of energy or passion. Where it’s not a bright colour it is quite
recessive and corporate: it’s a “safe” colour, which won’t
upset anyone like a bright pink or lime green might. It can
also be associated with mystery and independence (being
unusual compared to other more common primary colours).

The blue colour that Everest have brought back has the
obvious association with the history of the brand.

It’s also a much brighter, more energetic and optimistic
colour than the purple, and provides a fresher and cleaner
aspect to the web design.

There are a few watch-outs with this shade of blue. If used
without care, it can appear corporate, clinical, or safe (think
Boots, Barclays, Facebook). Where it’s used carefully and
intelligently, it appears fresh, energetic and progressive
(Twitter, Visa, American Express). Blue is often seen as a
colour of prestige and of leaders.

Technically, the aubergine colour was useful for
accessibility, being dark enough to stand out against pale
colours as text and also to support white text when used as
a background colour.

The lighter version of the blue when used online does not
pass accessibility standards.



Gill Sans, is elegant, classically modern, sleek and
considered, especially in its “light” headline style. The use of
light headlines is common across modern, clean-cut sites
such as those mentioned before: Apple, Microsoft, Android,
Nest, and makes the site look contemporary and efficient.
The hierarchy of headings and body text styles is clear and
makes the pages easy to scan and digest.

Just as with the colour palette, the question arises about
personality. The typography is clean and clear, but
potentially is a wasted opportunity to speak about the
positioning of the brand. No particular personality is
conveyed through the typography, when it could be used
for example, to convey a passion for craftsmanship and
design with a unique and considered font with some design
flourish; prestige and leadership through an elegant and
classic serif font; warmth and comfort through a font that’s
more homely and friendly.

The icons used on the site are clear and well-designed but
again very modern in their clean and sharp lines. Start-ups
and Bootstrap/Wordpress sites often used this style as it’s
become well understood and fashionable.

The contemporary style of the icons is slightly at odds with
the draughtsman-style illustration assets used to show
product categories, and perhaps there is a way to bring
them together.



The photography on the site generally doesn’t do justice to
the products. Their size is rarely big enough to really show
off their beauty or detail – and after all, the people need to
match a visualisation of the product with what they’re
imagining in their own homes. On inner pages the banner-
style shots do a better job, but there’s so much more that
could be shown. The images used as backgrounds don’t
shine through and are hard to understand.

The shots themselves vary but often are studio shots which
don’t show any of the in-situ atmosphere or context, which
means they tell no story to the user. Doors in particular look
much worse as studio shots. But even where the shots are
real houses, the styling is generally quite homogenous, with
the odd potted plant, and again the same story is being told
over and over again. Wouldn’t someone who wants a
contemporary-style door also been motivated by, for
example, a modern door mat or house number?

There are no people in any of the photos, which makes
them seem sterile and lifeless. These products aren't just
built for their own sake – and that's how it comes across at
the moment. They're built for people to enjoy, for their lives,
their family lunches, their cosy evenings in, their happiness.
A conservatory is not just a technical masterpiece that you
are proud of building, it had much more meaning than that.
Again, no story is being told.

There is a good amount of video content to explain helpful
benefits, but the style, quality and tone of them varies
wildly.

Keeping noises out – In this video, a strong product benefit is
accompanied by light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek music. You
don't need to dumb yourselves down like that. There is a
nice effect where the components come apart but it’s still
hard to see what's what

See what makes our door better – provides a good
explanation but has an inconsistent style and graphic
treatment from other videos – and again just repeats
information available elsewhere

Door security – this video comes across as old fashioned,
like something from a daytime show in the early 2000s -
although the message is good and it’s interesting to see the
stress tests.

Susan's story – this plays like a health charity or “make a will”
advert in tone, which seems inappropriate for a brand like
Everest. It also just hammers home the message “we're the
best” – as with some other communication elements, if you
don't buy that, you're left with nothing emotive to believe in.



Even on landing pages, there is an overload of information
for the user - good communication means saying your most
important messages well so people can understand and
stay interested. There’s no harm in providing more in-depth
information, and it seems counter-intuitive to hide product
benefits, but you can’t just bombard people with facts. With
careful visual design, we could find a way of quickly and
convincingly providing the information in a different way.

The copywriting is straight-talking, not too technical, but
plain and clear. This is good as it avoids the hard sell, or
unnecessary “brand” stylings coming into a place where the
customer is digging deep into the detail. The tone is
balanced with more human elements such as the phrasing
"You might also be wondering" rather than “Frequently
asked questions”. Out of all the elements of the site, the
copywriting is the part that feels the most accomplished and
appropriate for the user.

The cross-section graphic provided to explain the features
of the window provides good information but is a little
technical and hard to understand – it can build to a sense
that you're trying to overwhelm the user with info until they
say yes.

There is a strong sense of insistence, for example with the
repetitive and recurring discount offer, the live chat that
keeps coming back, and in information repeated from page
to page, often in a way that makes it seem even on one
page you’re repeating things – this makes it feel like more of
a hard sell.

The Get Inspired section could be a really powerful place to
inspire people with visions of what they could have – but
instead it's more words. Surely here's a more visual way to
do this?



Everything is too clean and sterile and doesn’t
speak to any particular brand personality,
whatever it is that’s chosen. Currently is looks a
bit like the Apple website but without the epic,
confident beauty of the product shots that
make the Apple site what it is. At worst it’s
unexciting and bland.

There isn’t enough on the site that will inspire,
move or compel users to engage beyond the
practical side of things. There needs to be
better imagery and a more creative use of that
imagery, more interactivity and high-quality
rich content.

The recurring, forceful and interruptive offers
end up dominating the designs and relegating
any other brand positioning. Imagine someone
standing outside the Apple store shouting
discounts at you – it becomes a market stall,
not a leading retailer.



While Adam Morgan’s “challenger marketing
credos” are designed to help brands that are not
dominant in the marketplace, his ideas still apply
to every company, and especially those
rethinking or building on their existing brand.

Establishing a “lighthouse identity” means
defining and communicating your brand
proposition in such a clear and singular way that
people find it easy – effortless, in fact - to
navigate towards or away from it (any brand, as
much as you would like it to be, is not for
everyone, and this needs to be accepted).
Diluting the brand proposition with compromises
can only confuse the user or even out your
brand until it both offends and appeals to no-
one. We believe your website plays as much a
part in this as anything.

Adam Morgan, Eating the Big Fish

Design can be a hugely subjective endeavour.
In order to draw some of the subjectivity out of
the challenge, we need to start by having a
creative rationale that is meaningful and
resonant, both for your brand and the user.

One such model is the Brand Archetype
system developed by Mark and Pearson, which
states that there are twelve core personalities
that successful brands adhere to. However,
ultimately we will be looking to make sure that
your brand at least tells any consistent and
meaningful story through its digital presence,
without lapsing into generic information
provision or thoughtless internet design tropes.

Mark and Pearson, The Hero and the Outlaw

We believe that to change user behaviour, you
need to both follow best practice and innovate
to surprise and improve. To innovate creatively,
you need to start from a position that nothing is
unchangeable, everything can be improved,
and there might be things out there that no-
one has done before that can be incredibly
powerful.

The (apocryphal) adage of people wanting
“faster horses” sums up the mind-set we want
to avoid: people don’t realise they want
something they’ve never seen before. This
doesn’t mean we will innovate for its own sake
– rather, we will continuously ask questions
and challenge assumptions to find places from
improvement.