[Guaranteed] Young and Thrifty.ca Needs a FRESH NEW LOOK

Young and Thrifty

We are looking to give our site a fresh new look that better accomplishes our goals. Young and Thrifty is a mix of a traditional Canadian personal finance blog (with excellent search engine results) and an evolving rate comparison site for financial products.

We are aimed at Canadians with a primary focus on 21-40-year-olds, and a secondary focus on 40+-year-olds.

The general “feel” and one of the main goals of the site is to take complicated financial concepts and break them down into entertaining, digestible pieces.

Our personal goal is to maximize revenues in addition to providing a valuable free-to-view educational resource. Most of our revenue is made through the affiliate model, specifically the robo advisor, online banking, DIY investing, and real estate verticals. We would like to prominently feature these areas (as you can tell by our current website: https://youngandthrifty.ca/).

What we would like re-designed is the following:
Homepage
About Us/Start Here Page
Specific Category Pages: https://youngandthrifty.ca/investing-made-easy/, https://youngandthrifty.ca/real-est…mortgages/
Side bar and navigation bar on all inner pages
The following key pages (could be worked on with designer going forward):
http://youngandthrifty.ca/questrade-review/
https://youngandthrifty.ca/complete…ine-banks/
https://youngandthrifty.ca/online-b…ne-tastes/
https://youngandthrifty.ca/complete…-advisors/
https://youngandthrifty.ca/mortgage…to-choose/
https://youngandthrifty.ca/variable…mortgages/

We’d be open to altering our logo, but we are very partial to the current design as it has a lot of brand equity. If anyone wants to take a stab at modernizing the logo (see attached), but that’s not our primary goals right now.

We’d like our pages (especially our homepage, Start Here page, and About Us page) to accomplish the following goals in this priority order:

1) Let people know who we are, what they can get out of coming to our site, and a relatively clean design.

2) Check out our preferred products (see our key pages listed above, and our current sidebar). This could include comparison tables, comparison graphics, and/or a “Most Recommended” feature.

3) sign up for email list

4) Navigate to an article that answers their questions. This includes directly going to our most popular and newest articles - as well as creatively displaying our category options.

Our current pages are a good guide to what we think is important, but lack elite graphics, and clear calls to action in order of priority. We also want to stay away from loading huge graphics so as to keep our page load time down.

Below is a list of the sites we love to look at, want a similar UX to, and a similar overall feel for. You will notice that the sites vary between pure rate comparison sites, magazine-style feels, and personal blogs. We seek to be a blend of these elements.

Inspiration Websites:

https://www.ratehub.ca/
http://www.lowestrates.ca/mortgage
https://www.nerdwallet.com/
https://www.comparethemarket.com.au/home-loans/
https://www.moneysupermarket.com/mortgages/
https://www.policygenius.com/
http://affordanything.com/
http://www.moneyaftergraduation.com/
http://www.halfbanked.com/
http://clubthrifty.com/

http://youngandthrifty.ca/

Please see brief.

Please see the brief. I don't want to get too specific in terms of listing how we want the site organized or what we want everything to look like. Instead, I'd like to see your creativity in displaying this information in an attractive manner. Our ultimate goals and priority list is pretty well defined in the brief.

Please see the current pages and inspiration sites for a good idea of what we want included.

Please see the brief and review the inspiration pages. Don't be afraid to ask questions as I will respond promptly.