Key Takeaways

• Sekure's website incorporates the use of chat tools that offer live chat services, various call-to-action buttons (for example, call us now), and forms that captured the contact information of interested users.
• The tone used in Stax by Fattmerchant's website is authoritative and persuasive, with the language communicating the company's strength and immense benefits to its customers. The wording used includes "radically simplify", "dynamic growth", "smarter, move faster, and increased profits". Throughout the website and the descriptions of its offerings, the company communicates how its solutions will benefit the consumers directly.
• Helcim's landing page is simple and keeps things short, showcasing only 3 images that accompany the company's three main product offerings. At the bottom of the page, however, are many hyperlinked web pages. A cursory look through these web pages also reveals a similar design aesthetic, but with more content.

Introduction

Summary of Findings

• Sekure's website color palette is blue and white, with small splashes of orange. The balance and pattern of the website appears congruent, with each section having a similar design. The images used are clear, bright, and crisp, and include happy, seemingly satisfied people. These images are placed in a similar design throughout the website (including a banner photo accompanying the company name on every web page), and often accompanied by text. A cursory assessment of the website and accompanying web pages show a balanced and crisp aesthetic.
• Stax by Fattmerchant's main tagline reads, "One flat price. One platform. Every payment." Each web page has a different tag line splashed across the top of the website. It is also noted that the stacks behind each tagline (per different web page) uses a different color, but all congruent with the multi-colored stacks witnessed in the website's landing page.
• Helcim's overall design aesthetic leans towards a crisp, clean, and simple aesthetic. Its main colors are blue and white, with white being the dominant background color. The blue is incorporated in the call-to-action buttons. For the most part, the words are in black, with headings in bold black.
• Heartland incorporates the use of animated banners attached to the images on the landing pages. It is presumed to show how easy it is to use each of the solutions/products outlined.
• Clover's top bar has 4 tabs; Shop, Features, Business Types, and Resources. It also includes a Get Started/Connect to Sales tab highlighted in green on the top right corner of the landing page and some web pages. A similar categorization is listed at the base of the website, and includes another 4 categories- integration, social media platforms, small business resources, and Help. Each of these categories further lists the various products.solutions/resources on offer. In total, it lists about 48 web pages.

How Sekure Compares

Overall Design Aesthetic

• Except Stax by Fattmerchant's website, the predominant color incorporated by Sekure and its other competitors is white, with splashes of blue and/or green. Other colors noted include orange, grey, purple, black, and yellow. Blue and white is the preferred color scheme of most of these websites.
• Sekure and most of its competitors (except Stax by Fattmerchant) all use vibrant, bright pictures with warm hues. Heartland and Square's images appear to be larger and more vibrant, as they occupy more space than those allocated to the images used by Sekure and other competitors.

Copy Tone and Verbiage

• The most dominant tone appears to be authoritative, with Sekure, Stax by Fattmerchant, Heartland, and Clover incorporating the use of words and phrases that communicates expertise, strength, and superiority.
• All the websites appear to give 1-2 -sentence descriptions of services/products that are often accompanied by an image and a call-to-action button. The differentiating factor for Sekure is how it incorporates client testimonials in the product description.

Navigation and Menus

• The preferred number of tabs incorporated in the top bar is 4 (Helcim, Clover, and Square), followed by 6 (Sekure, and Heartland), and lastly 9 (Fattmerchant). While labeled differently, these tabs are centered around products, solutions, features, and company information. Unlike Heartland, Clover and Square, Sekure does not highlight a Get Started button (or something similar) at the top right corner of the website.
• At the base of the websites where these companies further expound on their offering and company information, Sekure appears to list the least number of web pages (14). Square leads the pack, with more than 75 web pages, followed by Heartland at 65, and Clover at 48.

Use of Animation and Functionality

• Animation does no appear to be a dominant feature, as it is only Heartland that incorporates the use of animated banners next to its product description to show how simple it is to use said product.

• In this area, Sekure and almost all its competitors have chat tools and forms embedded in their website. What stood out in this category was that Fattmerchant required the estimated annual revenue of interested companies as part of all its forms.

Other Website Features

• Sekure and all its competitors also incorporates additional features such as blogs and/or social media platforms/icons in their website. Helcim is the only website that appears to have embedded videos in some of its images

Research Strategy