Dropbox for Business

Soon after finishing my work with Good Eggs, I began working with Dropbox. My first project was to help with the press launch of their photo manager, Carousel. Soon after, I took on the redesign of the Dropbox for Business marketing site, redesigning the suite of six blogs, and dozens of other projects.

Dropbox Blog Redux

I recently returned to the land of Dropbox to redesign the blog. 4 years ago, there were 6 disparate blogs on multiple platforms: Dropbox, Business, Tech, Developer, Mailbox, & Carousel. I worked to pull them together into a much more unified and evolved look and feel in Wordpress. The resulting redesigns (see below) were a success. In the time since, Dropbox has undergone a massive rebrand. Focusing on creative energy, the new direction could not be further away from where it was. Sometimes it’s worth evolving a brand. Sometimes you need to throw that baby out with the bathwater.
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The goal of the blog’s redesign was to push it into an editorial space that felt more like a magazine. This time around I worked with close Dropbox collaborator, Instrument. Over the course of 8 weeks, we iterated on different aspects of the new brand. We used the strong visual language to develop a system that would work everywhere from the homepage to articles, collections, search, etc. The resulting experience, Work in Progress, is a refreshing breath of fresh air.

Unifying 6 Dropbox Blogs (Old)

Within Dropbox, six blogs had been built up over time: Dropbox, Mailbox, Dropbox for Business, Carousel, Developer, & Tech. In addition, they were built up on three platforms and none were mobile friendly. The overarching goal with the new suite  was to create a cohesive system that would let the content shine in the context of the larger brand.

Redesigning the Dropbox for Business Site (Old)

Soon after finishing my work with Good Eggs, I began working with Dropbox. My first project was to help with the press launch of their photo manager, Carousel. Afterwards, I took on leading the redesign of the Dropbox for Business website. The end product is a result of close collaboration between the design, marketing, and sales teams. It’s a flexible framework built for iteration and change. Since its launch, continual improvements have made it more and more effective at converting new customers.

Problems & Solutions

The single most important thing I’ve learned, since moving into interactive design, is to clearly focus on problems and solutions. It sounds so basic but if actual problems aren’t clearly defined and solved for, who cares how sexy your site looks?

The central goal of dropbox.com/business, is to get more visitors to try or buy the product. To do this, the redesigned Dropbox for Business needed to address a number of underlying issues. Problems with the previous site included:

1. Haphazard layout system made it difficult to scale or iterate. The old site was not built to improve over time or test new ideas.
2. The lack of a distinct Dropbox for Business brand didn’t differentiate the product from the Basic and Pro versions in users’ minds.
3. The original site was difficult to navigate for either the user trying to quickly glean information or the user looking to dig deep.
4. A lack of visual & informational hierarchy made it hard for a user to know what the most important content was.

With these problems in mind, we laid out a set of goals for the redesigned site to achieve:

1. Create a better framework for scaling and testing content.
2. Reinforce the Dropbox for Business brand identity to inspire confidence in potential customers.
3. Create a more logical page structure and navigation allowing for both learning at a glance and reading about product features in depth.
4. Work with marketing and sales teams to hone Dropbox for Business’s message into a clear, and actionable structure.

Dropbox OPEN

Dropbox OPEN was an invite-only one day event that brought together business customers, analysts, and press. Similar to Salesforce's Dreamforce or Box's BoxWorks. Speakers included Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, HP's Meg Whitman, and Apple's Eddie Cue, and others.