Valley Strong Credit Union
Redesigning one clear experience for digital banking
Valley Strong Credit Union partnered with Meaningful Works on a full website redesign. With over 100 financial products and services spanning both individual and business banking, Valley Strong needed a digital experience that could showcase its full range without overwhelming the people trying to use it, while still capturing the human connection that sets a credit union apart from a bank.
Project Type
Website Redesign
Role
Associate Design Director
Agency
Meaningful Works
Industry
Financial Services / Banking
The Challenge
Valley Strong had grown to offer more than 100 products and services across personal and business banking, but its legacy website couldn't keep up. Navigation was cluttered, personal and business offerings blurred together, and customers struggled to find or even discover the products most relevant to them. On top of that, Valley Strong's real differentiator, the human, high-touch relationship members had with their local branch, wasn't showing up anywhere in the digital experience.
Our Approach
Research
Audited the current site to understand where the experience was breaking down, and ran a competitive analysis across both direct competitors and indirect ones, looking at how other industries handle large, varied catalogs well. We also conducted stakeholder interviews with department heads across the organization to understand their specific business needs, from how each department wanted to present their products and drive conversions, to the audience and pain points unique to their part of the business, and their vision for what the redesign needed to accomplish.
Key Decisions
Split the site into two distinct navigation systems, Personal and Business, with a clear color shift between them and consolidated entry points (Get Started, Log In, Search) into single grouped dropdowns.
Designed a content-discovery model inspired by streaming platforms like Hulu and Apple TV: a carousel-driven homepage surfaces high-demand categories, while "LifeStage Banking" and "Growth Solutions" pages group products by life stage or business size instead of product type.
Built two product-page templates by purchase complexity: a self-service template for products like checking accounts, and an advisor-supported template with bios and success stories for complex products like commercial financing.
Carried the human-connection differentiator through the site with the "Valley Strong Promise" brand film, member testimonials, and advisor cards placed next to the products those advisors support.
Outcome
Redesigned the entire digital experience for 100+ financial products across Personal and Business banking, transforming a cluttered legacy site into two clear, distinct experiences built for very different audiences.
