I designed and built three new company pages that reflect Pumpkin as an innovative, relevant, and values-driven player in the booming pet-tech space.
company
Pumpkin Pet Insurance
role
Product Designer
Page Builder
collaborator
Ashley Turchek
background
Pumpkin’s people pages﹣their Career, Company, and Press pages﹣had not been touched since the beginning of the company’s history. Leadership requested that the pages be re-designed to reflect Pumpkin’s growth from a small start-up to a larger presence in the pet-tech space. They gave me total freedom in how I wanted to approach the project, and said that I could design however many new pages I needed to meet all of the stakeholder goals.
research
I held six interviews with employees across the company. I interviewed the CEO and the Chief of Experience to learn what the leadership team wanted these pages to communicate. I interviewed two members of Pumpkin’s people operations team to make sure these pages would meet their needs from a talent acquisition standpoint. I also interviewed two recently hired employees to learn about what made Pumpkin stand out to them during their job hut.
I took key quotes from the interviews and did a mapping exercise to pull out the takeaways.
KEY takeaways
Appeal to two user groups
The members of the leadership team wanted these pages to appeal to two users: potential partners who may want to work with Pumpkin and prospective employees who may be interested in applying for jobs.
Emphasize pet-centricity
Interviewees were all quick to mention their desire to reflect Pumpkin as a place where pets reign supreme. They wanted to make sure these pages would paint Pumpkin as a haven for the pet-obsessed.
Showcase values-driven culture
Leadership, people ops, and recent hires all spoke at length about wanting the pages to highlight the company culture. All interviewees agreed that Pumpkin’s values and culture are what make it stand out.
Freshen and update
Leadership and people ops both mentioned that they wanted the pages to feel fresh and updated. They wanted to make sure that the company information is up to date and the featured articles are recent and relevant .
hypothesis
If we create new people pages that feel fresh, showcase Pumpkin’s values, and emphasize the company’s passion for pets, then we can create more brand affinity from potential partners and prospective employees.
three new pages
I decided that we would need three pages to meet the needs of the stakeholders on this project. I designed and built a “Press” page to showcase Pumpkin’s relevance and thought leadership, an “About Us” page to tell the story of how the company was born and how it’s run, and a “Join the Pack” page to appeal to prospective talent.
office photography
Capturing beautiful images of our New York office was a key step in executing these pages. These photos serve the purposes of making the page look fresh, making Pumpkin look like a player in the tech space, and appealing to those prospective employees who like the sound of spending all day with fluffy four-legged coworkers. I got to use my television production experience to produce and direct this photoshoot, and I’m obsessed with how the photos came out.
Expansive, airy, fun-filled photographs of the office help to paint the picture of Pumpkin as an exciting, evolving innovator in the pet-tech space
emphasis on values
A key takeaway from the interviews was that Pumpkin’s commitment to its values has resulted in a staff that is highly aligned with the mission. Recent hires cited the company values as a reason they gravitated towards Pumpkin, and leadership thought it was crucial to illustrate how Pumpkin’s core values have contributed to a workplace that is full of kind, compassionate pet lovers. I made sure that the content on the people pages reflected how vital the company values are to the way that Pumpkin is run.
This section highlights the winners of Pumpkin’s Best in Show Award, which is awarded to the employee that best embodies the company values.
project status
I built these pages in Elementor, the Wordpress website builder that Pumpkin uses for its DTC content pages. It took around a week to build the three pages, and they went live to a very warm reaction from the project stakeholders. The people team has also been able to use imagery from our photoshoot in materials on LinkedIn. Overall the project was a success, and all stakeholders involved are happy to have people pages that reflect the values and appeal of Pumpkin. You can visit the pages here.
challenges
The majority of the top-of-funnel pages on pumpkin.care were built using a Wordpress builder called Elementor. When I was designing these pages, I knew that I would have to eventually have to build them in Elementor. It made the design process a little more challenging, because I knew I was limited by what I was capable of building myself. The Press page ended up deviating from what I had designed because of limitations in Elementor, but overall I was able to execute most of what I had designed in Figma.