Western Union

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Website and Content Management Platform

Making The World Smaller
Whether it's for education, healthcare or just the groceries, Western Union has always been a leader in money transfer services around the world. After all, you don't stay in business for 159 years without learning a thing or two about how to adapt. Evolving from telegrams to international money transfers, Western Union is always looking for new business opportunities.

Missing The Connection
While their customers have increasingly turned to the web as a resource for discovering their services, Western Union's web presence didn't live up to the superior customer experience offered over the phone or by local agents. The site lacked the ability to index by search engines, and it didn't have a comprehensive content management system to allow for easy editing or updating. In short, it didn't represent the true Western Union experience.

Western Union Canada was keenly aware of this disconnect, and came to us with a bold initiative to transform their customers' online experience with two clear goals:

  • Help them answer customer questions and alleviate confusion on how to properly use Western Union services
  • Drive customers to ultimately transfer money online, over the phone or at a local agent

Rebuilding the Western Union Experience Online
Our first task was identifying the previous website's lapses in content and navigation. From the start, we knew this would involve a lot more than a simple re-skin. A re-launch would be successful only if it could take the real world Western Union experience and deliver it online. This meant ensuring that the site could easily answer any questions a customer might have about services or features.

We also examined why and when customers were leaving the old site without completing a transfer, and where customers were spending their time viewing promotions or news updates. And because the interface was so crucial to the user experience, we methodically crafted the copy and structured the interface in a way that encouraged the user to feel welcome and engaged throughout their visit.

The new website now encourages customers to explore Western Union's core offerings, helps them easily find a location in their neighbourhood through a geo-targeting agent locator, and keeps existing customers up-to-date on Western Union promotions, news and community events. It also allows customers to sign up for Corridor promotions (promotions aimed at specific ethnic groups), and keeps them informed on the latest news in both of Canada's national languages (plus a number of other Corridor languages).

Making The Results Count
What was once a forgotten public relations outlet is now a driving force in connecting Western Union with its diverse customer base, and ultimately driving more transactions online. The updated Western Union Canada website has experienced a tremendous spike in visitors and indexing by search engines. Since its re-launch, the site has doubled both its number of daily visitors and the number of pages viewed by each visitor. Plus, the average time spent on the site increased by over two minutes. Most importantly, online transactions have increased exponentially as a result of the simpler, clearer and more concise navigation.

The Western Union Canada website is now fresh, fully bilingual and can easily evolve with future web-based marketing endeavours. Patrick Lee, head of Digital Marketing for Western Union, had this to say upon the website's release: "We've fundamentally shifted our approach to interacting with our customer base. The website easily allows us to connect with our customers in their native languages while allowing us to fully leverage the benefits of our traditional advertising campaigns."

Western Union Goes Mobile

Western Union Canada's mobile website was purposely designed to be a focused and compact experience. Containing just five sections, what initially appears to be a small promotional site actually covers the entirety of Western Union's services. It updates users on the latest Western Union news, events, and promotions, and supplies directions to a Western Union outlet in the user's neighbourhood using GPS. With a focused user experience, this surprisingly robust mobile site helps users get things done on the run with a minimum of fuss.

Very Important Pinoy

The Very Important Pinoy promotion is an ongoing year-long promotion targeted to Western Union's large Filipino community. The microsite we built for it allows Western Union to add the latest VIP contest winners to the site, and send targeted news, events and promotions by province to VIP members across Canada. It also allows customers to sign up for the VIP discount card.

Holiday Surprise

Holiday Surprise is another ongoing national promotion conducted by Western Union Canada that we built a microsite for. To help connect Canadian customers with their families around the world, this promotion awarded winning customers with a plane ticket to anywhere in the world. The microsite keeps customers informed on the latest winners, lists the contest rules and regulations, and explains how customers can enter the promotion though a series of simple animations.

Key Technology:

  • Bilingual language support
  • User and Agent location cross-referencing using a Geo-Location API combined with Google Maps for both the Desktop and Mobile websites
  • Ease of deployment for microsites and corridor pages using a custom CMS (Content Management System)
  • High-level site organization for SEO of content postings
  • Custom Content Management System that allows content to be edited inline and additional sections to be added to the website
  • Creation of an API layer to deliver content to third-party services and mobile platforms
  • Targeted news, events and promotions based on geographical location