SheStarts

It was inspired by the qualities of the women participating in the program; ambitious, creative and passionate. The combination of bold typography, vibrant colours and breathtaking imagery creates a strong emotional connection with our target audience. To explore this in more detail; the colours and typography used were not only chosen to create a visually stunning experience, we wanted to challenge feminine stereotypes. To show that women are just as creative, just as strong and just as successful. Additionally, the use of diverse and powerful photos of women allowed it to feel more human and relatable. It is important to show that anyone, including you, our sisters, mothers and friends can become a founder.

Our challenge was to create a website able to evolve at various phases of the 12-month campaign; from the applications phase, to people's choice voting and then showcasing the web-series. So the site was designed and built to be flexible enough to accommodate all the changes and new functionality that came with each phase. The current live website is in phase 9 of the evolution. We also wanted to guide people through the journey from multiple perspectives. So we enabled content to be created by multiple major players; the SheStarts team, the founders and the partners. Our audience is able to get a much more immersive experience because they have access to multiple sides of the story.

SheStarts is backed by high profile corporate partners and the goals are incredibly ambitious. We needed to ensure that the quality of the website reflected the high calibre of these partnerships. Therefore, our testing and quality assurance processes were very detailed and thorough and the end product was constructed and finished with a lot of attention and care. We also custom built a lot of the functionality and components with Wordpress as the foundation, allowing the SheStarts team to create content autonomously, while maintaining quality, throughout the campaign. We have been really pleased with the ROI, with positive feedback from partners and stakeholders, and strong ongoing traffic on the site.

The ambition of SheStarts is to launch and grow female-led global tech startups. The website design was crucial in attracting hundreds of high quality applicants for the program, so we could select the best of the best - high potential startups that will deliver financial return and achieve global impact. But the greatest ROI from this project is in the social impact. SheStarts is a movement to change the face of the startup economy and redefine what it means to be a tech entrepreneur. The site is a platform to inspire and amplify women in entrepreneurship, and demonstrate the value of diversity in tech. The potential impact on our social and economic progress of engaging this untapped talent will be huge.