Mergers and acquisitions are common among small businesses. These changes can drive value for each side of the deal, but they come with some unique design concerns. Most notably, how do you create a unified identity for the two parties that suits both existing audiences and appeals to new ones?
Thankfully, the long history of successful past M&As reveals some helpful best practices. Here are five tips to consider when designing a new website for a merged brand.
Identify the New Audience
The first step is to pinpoint the combined audience. In a horizontal merger, the target niche is likely the same as each company’s pre-merger user base, requiring little adaptation. Conglomerate mergers or acquisitions, by contrast, may introduce new markets to consider or alter the primary demographic.
When T-Mobile merged with Sprint in 2020, the former company absorbed the other into its brand. Since both parties served the same industry, it was acceptable to leave the site relatively unchanged. However, you may need to adjust some factors in a different type of M&A.
Consider using a larger font size if the target demographic skews older post-merger. Tone down the color palette if the combined audience is more business-oriented than one side’s pre-M&A user base. Every design choice should keep both audiences in mind, so it’s important to identify the target demographic early.
Integrate Design Elements from Each Side
It’s also crucial to ensure the unified design does not alienate either side of the merger. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to combine design cues from the two companies.
You could take the font from one website but the color scheme from the other. Alternatively, you might combine the primary colors of each brand into a new palette that’s similar to both sides but distinct in its own right. Combining shapes, logos and word choices poses other integrated design opportunities.
Consider how United Airlines changed their logo after their merger with Continental. The combined design incorporated Continental’s globe icon and blue shade but used United’s existing typeface.
Communicate the Merge
Clarification is also important in post-merge web design. Since more than 500,000 businesses change hands annually, it’s easy for any individual one of these to go unnoticed by the brand’s consumers and site visitors. You can avoid confusion in the aftermath by publicizing the M&A across the website and related socials.
Consider putting an announcement about the merger at the top of the page or in the sidebar — somewhere users will see it. Include links to a post announcing the transition and explaining the unified design and how it reflects both companies. Explicitly stating your purpose and actions like this ensures any aesthetic changes or name shifts don’t lead to confused and frustrated customers.
Combine Content
As you integrate visual designs from each side of the merger, don’t forget to do the same for the website’s content. The companies likely have an existing pool of blogs, announcements and other helpful posts aimed at their separate target audiences. Compiling them under one umbrella helps you make the most of this earlier work to continue serving the combined user base.
Perform a content audit on each earlier site to determine what you have to work with. Then, identify similarities between them so you can craft new categories to file them under for easier navigation. You could keep things separate, but refreshing old content under new groups will form a stronger unified brand image.
As you reorganize posts between sites, remember to update any links to these pages. As many as 23% of news sites and over half of all Wikipedia articles contain broken links, and that’s a problem you want to avoid to facilitate a smoother merge.
Test Multiple Options
It’s often difficult to tell what combination of design cues and content yields the best results. Consequently, you may want to create multiple versions of the site and compare their traffic to identify the optimal redesign.
Multivariate testing is an ideal option, as it works best for high-traffic sites, and the combined website can reach both existing audiences. This method also compares more factors simultaneously, leading to higher precision and a shorter trial period. However, A/B testing may be better if the merger involves two smaller sites or there aren’t as many possible designs to try.
A Unified Brand Deserves a Unified Design
M&A activity is most effective when the two companies plan a strong, unified brand image. As internet traffic becomes increasingly central to conducting business, a website design refresh becomes all the more important in that endeavor. Designers should keep these steps in mind to better serve their post-merger clients for improved long-term results.
