Ozforex

Building on an
Australian success story

Launched in 1998, OzForex has grown rapidly from its Australian-only origins to become one of the world's biggest foreign exchange services, helping over 200,000 people move money to 80 countries across 6 continents.

We've enjoyed a long online marketing relationship with OzForex, developing their brand in the digital space since 2001.

Creating and continually evolving a series of edgy advertising campaigns over the last decade has been enormously rewarding, and a lot of fun.

A combination of smart media placement and creative cut-through have helped OzForex achieve great, sustained results from their digital advertising spend.

The fact that OzForex achieved such success as a company with essentially the same launch website - successively (and successfully) bolting on more functionality since their first online trade in 2001 - speaks volumes about their world-beating rates and customer support.

No 'ordinary'
website project

In 2010, OzForex approached us to overhaul their brand, help completely re-engineer their online offering and, for the first time, develop a mobile dealing system... a fresh start, re-imagined from the ground-up for the modern web-era.

Over a year in the making, with 80 wireframes and 60 page templates this was no standard website design project. The scale of functional improvements included a new currency calculator, a dynamic foreign exchange dashboard, a set of 3rd-party tools and a full deals application – across 4 international brands on desktop and mobile.

Wish list
Overhaul brand design
New public site architecture
Re-engineer secure functionality
Dynamic FX dashboard
Calculators and 3rd party tools
Desktop and mobile experiences

Knowledge transfer

How do you fundamentally change the user experience and workflow that an incredibly loyal customer base is fully accustomed to (in some cases for more than a decade)?

How do you make it not just 'better', but 'so much better' that even the most frequent user will be delighted and not just surprised?

Empathy can't be over-rated

It might be the single biggest factor in successfully crafting a great online experience - empathy; an ability to step into the shoes of each user and understand them...

What are their needs?

What devices?
How often?
Who are they?
What time do
they access?
How did they
find us?
How do they
think?

... matched against their current experience...

Can they find what they need easily?
How many steps are there?
Which area is the most popular
Are they repeating tasks?
How did they find us?
How do they think?

The process

Working closely with the team at OzForex, our methods were fundamental in approach:

Clearly define the business goals and the user requirements - creating user personas to guide us.
Deconstruct the experience for the public and secure sites. (Footnote: A key discovery was that the deal creation process didn’t match the user’s expected natural workflow)
With the content and functions clearly identified and catalogued, we re-organised and checked them against the business goals and user profiles. This resulted in a new, user-centred structure; an FX dashboard with quick access to personalised rates and a re-engineered transaction process.
Develop wireframe prototypes and walk key users through the revised site.
Create a new visual language and develop full colour design layouts
Build a complete set of HTML front-end interface design templates for the Ozforex back-end development team to plug in.
Challenge and refine at every step!

Brand currency

Working with OzForex's existing strong colour palette, we overhauled the appearance of the brand. A modern, angular typeface reflects the simplicity of the offering and clear visual cues for buttons and other interactive elements

ensure the usability of the site. A roll out across Ozforex's international operations provides worldwide consistency and a branding platform for the company's continued meteoric rise.

  • Wireframes
  • Design exploration
  • Desktop
  • Mobile
  • Wireframes

    Design exploration

    Desktop

    Mobile

    Wireframes

    Design exploration

    Desktop

    Mobile

    Wireframes
    Design exploration
    Desktop
    Mobile

    Learning the trade

    As simple as OzForex's new online system is (and it is), there's nothing like seeing-to-believe. Produced for each territory and brand, a three minute e-learning video highlights both the advantages of using the service and its simplicity.

    Bringing together a voiceover with infographics and a tutorial capturing the simple steps needed to transfer money internationally, there's a level of trust and confidence built before the user has even created an account.

     

    Transfer completion

    100%

    Site launch: 15 December 2011

    "webqem and OzForex have worked closely together over many years. webqem have always understood our business and they ‘got’ what we wanted to achieve with this project.. taking the design process back to first principles and questioning all aspects of the existing website functionality. They designed a navigation structure to display over 200 pages of content in a simple manner and brought in new ways of displaying our existing information. They brought the OzForex website experience out of the 1990’s and into today. This included a mobile dealing system which was prescient given the rise of mobile visits since the new site launch."

    Chris Minehan -
    Head of Marketing, OzForex
    Mobile registrations 2011 2012 Up 70%
    Website visits 2010 10.084
    million visits
    2011 16.801
    million visits
    2012 23.147
    million visits