Docketwise

The idea behind Docketwise is to guide the immigrants through a labyrinth of applications, forms, notes and documents, and to free the immigration attorneys and lawyers from unnecessary paperwork and help them actually apply their knowledge and expertise in a much more efficient way.

Although the Docketwise web app had already proven to be highly functional and innovative, the promo website created to demonstrate the features of the app had several issues that needed to be fixed. Firstly, the website largely copied most of the details given in the app, overloading the pages and making it difficult for the users to process information and adequately assess its usefulness. Another problem concerned video guides used to promote the app: they were made via screen recording software, had no sound or commentary and were embedded as gifs, which led to issues with website load performance and ranking. On top of that, there were differences in brand attributes and visual representation between several marketing channels, presenting a certain challenge in terms of brand uniformity.

The main issue was a dire need to gain a balance between the functionality and operability of the website, making it appealing both for professionals and immigrants.

Having considered these issues in collaboration with the client, our B2B web design firm decided to address them by completing four main tasks. Firstly, we needed to maintain brand consistency across various communication channels, thus helping to build trust in the brand and the product. Secondly, achieving brand consistency and building trust is not possible without a comprehensive marketing strategy encompassing every element of the app. Thirdly, website ranking and its load performance had to be improved, mainly through the use of simple but essential content. Lastly, we wanted to allow the users to try out the offered features directly on the client’s marketing website and see how they actually work, without having to sign up for a trial or read long and confusing descriptions.

Ester placed emphasis on enhancing the Docketwise features since they are an integral part of the web app. Platforms and products involving legal documents and forms tend to be rather bland and unappealing, so we relied on the best practices from leading product companies and their approach to creating accessible and functional products and solutions, such as Intercom, Framer and Perdoo.

The presentation of such features as case tracking, smart forms, translations and invoices available on the web app had to be homogenized and visually coordinated.

We were able to achieve that through careful shaping of the visual arrangement of the information. The promo website needed a clear and concise visual language which is able to introduce complex functional elements. Firstly, our team designed a set of static illustrations that included more streamlined texts, keywords and only general definitions. Upon agreeing on the chosen form with the client, we used static illustrations as a template for creating animated ones, which provide a better understanding of how the features work and offer an insight into the working process.

Since the promo website had issues with the response speed and load performance, we focused on making the video guides as condensed and compressed as possible. Original video guides were made via a screen recording program, with no added dubbing or explanatory audio commentary. We managed to reduce their size by cutting a few steps and making them shorter, as well as by designing a more minimalistic and subdued interface. Quite often guides like this are created as SVG animations using Lottie since they are small files that can be easily and quickly modified. In this case, the .mp4 format proved to be more convenient, as .mp4 can convey certain stylistic nuances we wanted to express and secure consistency for other graphic elements.

The Docketwise team strives to make immigration law practice much easier and to change the experience of using immigration software for the better. It is hard to overstate the importance of a sleek and polished look when adapting the case management software to be more accessible. Ester fixed the issues that hindered the promo website performance, cut redundant details in the text and created visually compelling illustrations and different options for the Docketwise logo that can be used in various communication channels consequently helping the brand recognition to grow.