Startup Edmonton supports entrepreneurs in starting and growing tech-enabled products and companies by offering affordable workspace, free educational workshops, and hosting and supporting community events.

We learned through our research that startup founders highly valued the educational content, but Startup Edmonton needed to do more to communicate why and when founders should take which programs.

Insight 1:

Founders want a clear starting line

Founders are ideating and looking for Startup Edmonton to provide them with resources to support and direct them. Words like “Start” and “Guide” and “Steps” were commonly said in interviews. By just listing all the available programs, Startup Edmonton wasn’t providing any guidance on which program Founders needed to take in order to get started.

Need:

Highlight the program benefits and develop a more intuitive way to organize programs.

Insight 2:

Too much time is spent on FAQs

The Startup Edmonton team spent a lot of time answering questions about programs and helping founders find program fit. This time could be better spent.

Need:

Make the program-fit information (readiness criteria, pre-requisites, etc) readily available in introductory marketing materials and the website to empower founders to find the info on their own.

Insight 3:

There’s brand inconsistency 

The visual identity varied dramatically across programs, creating an inconsistent experience for founders. 

Need:

Unify the visuals across programs and have more consistent branding.

Insight 4:

Flexible to grow

Startup Edmonton is constantly adapting programs to better address community needs. Programs come and go depending on how successful they were with the community.

Need:

Any changes needed to be flexible enough to allow programs to be added or removed by the program team.

New stage structure

We restructured programs into “stages” in order to communicate sequential programming and learning prerequisites, as well as to make the “leveling up” more intuitive.

Website edits

I built out wireframes, did content planning, and gathered consensus for engaging webpage redesigns and revised architecture. 

Rebrand

I rebranded programs with clear marketing content, time commitments, and readiness criteria. This unified visual identities between programs, and the renamed programs better matched a founder’s expectations.

Downstream Docs.

In order to make the redesign a reality, I documented and prioritized the downstream impacts including redirects, marketing materials, program collateral.

Marketing Initiatives

We built out various communication and marketing assets for the programs, including this bite-sized educational clip for our social media accounts that I created with class screen recordings.

Community Building

This promo I created for Startup’s Podcast, The Get Started Show, showcases one of many initiatives we took to provide a platform for startups, communicate the steps involved, and build community.