How SunWest found more security, flexibility, and customers with Webflow
Arizona-based credit union SunWest has been around for more than 80 years. Their black and red logo wasn’t pleasing to the eye, especially on a screen. They wanted to meet their members — new and prospective — where they were and in a much more aesthetically pleasing way. That led to a three-year-long rebrand.
Hannah Riley, Creative Manager, and Katie DeFeo, Marketing Director, knew they couldn’t put in that much work with their current platform. They needed something with more flexibility, that would drive more traffic, and that was still mega-secure. That’s when they found Webflow.
Life before Webflow: help desks, duplicate sites, and no flexibility
Before migrating their marketing site to Webflow, SunWest used Fiserv, a fintech and payments company, as their CMS. And although it was easy to add photos and update written content, they couldn’t edit any part of the design — or even add new web pages — without requesting a change through Fiserv’s help desk.
As we were vetting platforms, we were looking for something where we could easily make last-minute changes on our own, where we could design it ourselves — and Webflow ticked all those boxes.
All new web pages were created with a .aspx URL. So, even when the completed page was on SunWest’s root URL (.com), there was a duplicate site (.aspx) being indexed by Google. That duplicate content resulted in massive SEO breakdowns, curbing traffic to their site and causing unreliable and inaccurate analytics.
Fiserv was also unable to host multiple blogs. So when SunWest wanted to create multiple blogs to appeal to different audiences, they switched their blog to Wordpress. That meant their blog had to be hosted on a subdomain, which isn’t ideal, especially when the main goal of your blog is to drive organic traffic. When they switched to Webflow, they were able to migrate all four blogs to their main domain.
Webflow spiked traffic and liberated the team
Hannah and her team knew a new web platform was a non-negotiable in order to complete the rebrand. The new logo, colors, site structure, and designs visually brought them to where they wanted to be, but their current platform was holding them back.
As a small team, educational materials are key. “I came across Webflow University and was blown away by all those resources,” Hannah said. And after taking what she found to Katie, she got an enthusiastic green light to give Webflow a shot. From there, Hannah built the entire site herself, with ongoing guidance and help from the Webflow Enterprise team.
Webflow did the trick for several reasons:
- It had a seamless integration with Fiserv, which still powers their secure client portal.
- It increased traffic across the board, including organic site visits.
- It empowered their marketing team to take control over the design and content on their site, allowing them to make changes faster
- Webflow is secure. A financial institution needs top-notch security. We worked closely with their security team to ensure Webflow met all security requirements.
The seamless integration with Fiserv was a big seller for Hannah and her team. Although they no longer used the platform as their CMS, they still needed it to power their secure client portal. To do it, they used Webflow native forms to build the UI, then Fiserv’s form action to securely pass the login data directly from Webflow to Fiserv.
Relaunch success
When they launched their brand new website, the SunWest team saw results flood in that they never knew were possible.
The improvements we have seen since launching our new site with Webflow are staggering. We struggled to keep members on our site for more than 30 seconds to a minute, and weren't able to compel users to visit other pages throughout the site as most visits were simply to login to online banking.
The switch to Webflow, paired with their rebrand (dream team!) caused an increase in across-the-board analytics:
- 164% increase in organic traffic
- 64,000 sessions in one month — the previous site averaged 55,000
- 400+ visits to product pages since March 1st — before Webflow, they averaged less than 20 visits per-month
- 2+ minute session duration — before the switch, it was under a minute
Webflow’s hosting handled the uptick in traffic flawlessly, loading pages quickly and ensuring their site ran smoothly.
A new era for SunWest
Moving forward, SunWest has plans to expand their in-house marketing team, and Webflow will be an asset for that growth. “I use Webflow to make all updates, but Katie also has access to make updates to the content,” Hannah said. “As our team gets bigger, we plan on opening up access to update the CMS for blog posts to our content team members. It’s going to be a huge asset and time-saver as we grow.”
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