Tangowork redevelops BC Unclaimed’s brand and website
Tangowork led a 9-month project to redevelop the brand and website of BC Unclaimed.
Rebranding: BCUPS to BC Unclaimed: Rebranding the BC Unclaimed Property Society
Design and UX writing: Is this legit? Establishing legitimacy through design
Website development: Performant and accessible: How we achieved near-perfect scores on BC Unclaimed’s website
Software development: Enhancing security by moving beyond Wordpress
Analytics: Tracking website success with surveys and dashboards
“We're extremely happy with our rebrand and new website at BC Unclaimed — and it's a pleasure working with Chris and his team at Tangowork!”
Sherry MacLennan
Executive Director, BC Unclaimed
BCUPS to BC Unclaimed: Rebranding the BC Unclaimed Property Society
After extensive research, we recommended “BC Unclaimed”.
Problem
“British Columbia Unclaimed Property Society” is a mouthful. But calling it “The Society” was vague, and the acronym “BCUPS” sounds like a delivery company or a bra size, depending on how you say it.
Our approach
Listening labs
Peer research
Intercept studies
Brainstorming
Solution
BC Unclaimed is the new brand name adopted by the British Columbia Unclaimed Property Society
After extensive research, we recommended “BC Unclaimed”.
It’s short.
It follows a pattern established by many other organizations in BC (“BC Assessment”, “BC Ferries”, “BC Hydro”, etc.).
And it de-emphasizes the word “Property”, which most people associate with physical land assets. (BC Unclaimed deals only with money, not real estate or other physical property.)
“The new name was greeted with enthusiasm by our staff and board — and aligns with how many of the people we’ve returned money to refer to us!”
Sherry MacLennan
Executive Director, BC Unclaimed
Is this legit? Establishing legitimacy through design
On first glance, some people were dismissing BC Unclaimed as a scam.
Problem
BC Unclaimed has $190 million waiting to be claimed, and their work is mandated by the Province of British Columbia. But some people have dismissed their website or social media posts as the work of scammers.
Our approach
Brand voice and values
UX writing
Graphic design
Infographic design
User testing
Solution
We established brand values for BC Unclaimed: trustworthy, professional, and helpful. We developed key messages and examples of how to write (and how not to). Then we rewrote the website, from the home page right on down to every label and navigation item.
The BC Unclaimed mark combines BC’s mountains and a shield, denoting security and trustworthiness, with leaves of paper representing financial assets. A subtle checkmark at the bottom of the mark illuminates on hover.
We developed a graphic look-and-feel that inspires confidence. It includes new fonts, colours, imagery, stationery, and a new website layout. (See the brand guide we developed.)
Before: The previous website was text-heavy and had no prominent call to engage
After: The new website is visually engaging and clearly explains BC Unclaimed’s value proposition
We introduced a dynamic infographic to clearly communicate the steps involved in returning money to rightful owners.
We conducted live user testing at key steps in the development process. In this case, a user tests an early prototype of the dynamic infographic. (User face replaced by AI for privacy.)
At key steps in the development process, we conducted live testing with BC residents. After each test, we made further refinements to ensure that each aspect of the design inspired confidence and was easy to use.
The end result is a website that conveys professionalism and legitimacy. Here are some direct quotes from our live user testing:
“It’s a nice-looking website. It feels solid and reliable. It fits the domain.”
“I like how professional the language is. It’s easy to understand; it’s easy to use.”
“I would send this website to my friends and family, because it seems legit.”
Performant and accessible: How we achieved near-perfect scores on BC Unclaimed’s website
We used Jamstack development with Contentful and NextJS, accessibility audits, and blind user testing.
Problem
Our planned design for BC Unclaimed’s new website was beautiful and feature-rich. But how would we make it fast? And how would we make it accessible to people using assistive technology?
Our approach
Headless content management with Contentful
Jamstack development on NextJS
Static pre-rendered pages
Accessibility audit
Blind user testing
Solution
Fast websites are a pleasure to use, inspiring confidence in visitors. We relied on a Jamstack development approach to ensure blistering performance (try the site now, and tell me if it’s not one of the fastest websites you’ve used!).
Despite the complexity of the home page, it achieves near-perfect scores on Performance, Accessibility, and Best Practices, as measured by Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
It was equally important to ensure everyone can use BC Unclaimed’s website, including people that rely on screenreaders or other assistive technologies. We used a 3-step process to ensure the website was accessible:
Used automated testing tools to audit our site until we had a perfect 100% accessibility score
Had an accessibility expert manually audit the site
Worked with the Canadian National Institute of the Blind to observe the actual experience of a blind user on our website
“I’d go with an 8 [out of 10]. I think it’s fairly strong overall… I didn’t encounter any hard barriers… Pat yourself on the back. Accessibility is a journey… Nobody’s perfect, no software is perfect, and we don’t expect accessibility to be perfect. It’s just important to keep moving forward.” — Blind user feedback from live user testing, prior to final accessibility fixes.
Enhancing security by moving beyond Wordpress
We designed a serverless architecture on AWS with Cognito, VPC, WAF and Lambdas.
Problem
BC Unclaimed’s website and user management was powered by Wordpress, with custom PHP scripts for handling the interface to BC Unclaimed’s main database. Wordpress is a capable content management system, but we needed a modern, scalable, fault-tolerant infrastructure with advanced security capabilities.
Our approach
Amazon Cognito with Advanced Security
AWS VPC
AWS Web Application Firewall
AWS Lambda
Cloudwatch Turnstile
Solution
We used AWS’s Canadian cloud services to build a robust infrastructure:
Amazon Cognito with Advanced Security to handle user management and to detect and block suspicious sign-ins.
AWS VPC for a private connection to BC Unclaimed
AWS WAF to automatically detect and block malicious activity
AWS Lambdas written in Go for serverless, scalable data processing
Cloudwatch Turnstile to block bots and spam
The result is a secure but low-cost system that will meet BC Unclaimed’s needs for years to come.
Tracking website success with surveys and dashboards
We aggregated data to Looker Studio, including a real-time survey for tracking user satisfaction.
Problem
BC Unclaimed has access to troves of data. But how could they turn that data into actionable insights?
Our approach
Measurement and analytics workshop
Data dashboard design
Real-time survey
Solution
Tangowork conducted a workshop with BC Unclaimed. Using Google’s HEART framework, we identified the most important website metrics to track.
Things like user adoption, engagement and retention could be measured using Google Analytics, with some custom code to track certain events. But the ultimate measurement of website success is whether users are happy.
A simple inline survey on key pages measures user satisfaction. 90% of users answer YES, they found what they were looking for.
To measure user happiness, we implemented an inline survey at the bottom of key pages on BC Unclaimed. The survey asks, at random:
Was this helpful?
Did you find what you were looking for?
How likely are you to recommend BC Unclaimed to a friend or relative?
After immediately capturing the user’s response, it presents an optional open-ended question that invites users to elaborate. All this data is aggregated to Looker Studio, where we’ve been thrilled to see the results:
95% YES — the website was helpful
90% YES — they found what they were looking for
Overall Net Promoter Score (NPS)* of 63.
*NPS is a way to measure whether people are promotors of your brand. 0 means people are neutral. -100 means everyone talks bad about it. +100 means everyone promotes it. For comparison, Apple’s NPS is 47, Walmart’s is -4, Amazon’s is 7.
Tangowork developed a data dashboard for BC Unclaimed. Built in Looker Studio, it integrates data sources including Google Analytics and our custom inline survey.
Open-ended feedback has been equally gratifying: users love BC Unclaimed’s new website!
“Your system is fast and very easy to use”
“Very clear concise directions”
“The process is very user friendly.”
“That was quick and painless. Thank you!”
“Great service, great website. Thanks!”
Tangowork's project for BC Unclaimed demonstrates the value of a well-executed digital transformation. The rebranded, rewritten, high-performing website strengthen’s BC Unclaimed's credibility and provides an excellent user experience.
Are you planning a website redesign? Contact us today.