Updating
Keeping ideas in motion
for perpetuity
WeTransfer
OVERVIEW
WeTransfer is a global SaaS company with over 89 million active users worldwide and a suite of products designed to ease the creative workflow. I worked alongside the internal team to position WeTransfer’s products and communicate their value, setting the strategy, product positioning, content architecture and verbal identity.
CLIENT
WeTransfer
INDUSTRY
Technology, SaaS, Sustainability
SCOPE
UX copywriting
Strategy
Tone of voice
BRIEF
As products, transfer and portals enable much more than just the transfer of files and the sharing of creative work.
We ran a series of 35 user behaviour mapping studies, where each user guided us through their thought process from first discovery of WeTransfer’s products to navigating the website. We asked users to perform three tasks, as if they were a new user of WeTransfer:
A) Walk us through their logic and understanding of a WeTransfer product page, what the product does, and whether they want to learn more or sign up to a membership.
B) Arrange information about the product and features into categories of their choice based on their logic
C) Rank the importance of each feature within each category in a hierarchical order, from least beneficial to them, to most.
After collecting the data, we performed a theme sort and a priority map to organise the data in a logical way and work out the priorities and next steps.
What we discovered from the data, was that users were labelling WeTransfer as a file transfer platform (as the name implied) and not taking advantage of all the opportunities WeTransfer enables: collaboration, growing their business, getting their voice heard, moving ideas into the spotlight.
A lot of users exhibited the same behaviour – the features they needed were available as part of their WeTransfer subscription, but they were only using the transfer feature to se files too big to send in an email.
Users weren’t using WeTransfer for anything other than sending large files because they weren’t aware that other features existed.
UNDERSTANDING
If nothing moves, nothing changes –WeTransfer is all about moving things forward.
KEY INSIGHTS
Show, don’t just tell
Using a mixture of our own logic and that gathered from the user mapping, team collaboration and historic data, we went with the concept of “show don't tell”, using product-led storytelling to communicate what WeTransfer enables beyond fast transfers.
Effortless collaboration means more time left to create, make, and grow. Fast file transfers isn’t just about “files” – it’s about helping people share whatever they want to share – work, creations, songs, ideas – effortlessly, freeing up time to focus on the things that matter.
The messaging evolved from functional to aspirational, moving up the abstraction ladder from the “how” to the “why – communicating how the products can be used, and why using them will improve your life.
I worked alongside the talented UX designer to implement overarching narratives for each page for phase 1 and 2. We faced several limitations from the developers when it came to the page structure, as well as a tight word limit. It’s easy enough getting the key concepts down, but whittling them into a two-line sentence that effectively educates and inspires – well that involves a significant amount of trial and error.
SOLUTIONS
“Sarah has been incredible to work with. From competitor and user research to turning insights into clear, beautiful comms across various marketing pages, Sarah was involved in every step of the design process. Layered, thoughtful, and to the point, while representing our brand beautifully, I’d be more than happy to work with Sarah again down the line.”
- Danilo Tesi, PMM & Psychologist, WeTransfer
8 story-driven product pages. 1 new careers platform. 1 new advertising platform. New site navigation. And double the click throughs.
Most of this work wouldn’t have been possible without the collaboration from fantastic people, who helped me bring the work to life: Danilo, Florence, Erin, Matt, Angelo and Bram. Kudos.
OUTCOMES