Consumer fintech · 2025
Halo Financial
A calm brand for a category that shouts
Halo had forty thousand people saving through the app and three different explanations of what it was. We wrote the positioning, rebuilt the identity around small screens, and replaced eleven bespoke partner decks with one argument the site could carry on its own.
- Positioning
- Identity
- Marketing site
- Client
- Halo Financial
- Sector
- Consumer fintech
- Year
- 2025
- Disciplines
- Branding, Design
Challenge
What was in the way
Halo grew almost entirely through referrals, which meant the product was well understood by the people already using it and close to invisible to everyone else. The App Store listing, the investor deck and the website each described a different company: a budgeting tool, a savings account, and a financial coach.
The cost was measurable. Paid traffic converted at roughly a third of the referral rate, and the partnerships lead was writing a bespoke deck for every conversation because nothing on the site could carry the argument without a person standing next to it.
Approach
How we worked
- 01
Positioning before pixels
Two weeks of interviews with fifteen customers and the founding team, then a written positioning document: who Halo is for, what it replaces, and the three claims the brand is allowed to make. Everything downstream had to trace back to that document, including the things we later cut.
- 02
An identity built at 24 pixels
Halo lives inside a phone, so the identity started at icon size and worked outward rather than starting on a billboard and shrinking. One geometric sans in two weights, a restrained palette anchored on deep green, and a mark that survives as an app icon, a favicon and a debit card face.
- 03
A site that argues rather than decorates
We wrote the site before designing it. Each section answers one objection in order: what it is, why it is different, what it costs, who already trusts it. The design gives that argument room and gets out of its way.
Deliverables
What we handed over
- Positioning statement and message hierarchy
- Verbal identity: voice, vocabulary and defensible claims
- Logo system, palette and type scale
- Shared component library for product and marketing
- Nine-page marketing site with a headless CMS
- Brand guidelines and asset kit for the in-house team
Results
What changed after launch
+38%
Demo requests
First 90 days after launch against the previous quarter, on identical paid spend.
0.9s
Largest contentful paint
Down from 2.6s on the site it replaced, measured on field data at the 75th percentile.
11 to 1
Partner decks
Eleven bespoke sales decks retired and replaced with one system the team maintains.
“We used to explain ourselves in every meeting. The site does it now, and it does it better than we did.”
Stack and tools
What it runs on
Design
- Figma
- Variable type scale
- Token-driven component library
Build
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Headless CMS
Measurement
- Server-side analytics
- Consent-aware tagging
- Quarterly funnel review
Timeline
How long it took
- Weeks 1 to 2
Discovery and positioning
Customer interviews, category audit, positioning document written and signed off.
- Weeks 3 to 5
Identity
Mark, palette and type system, tested at icon size before anything else was approved.
- Weeks 6 to 8
Copy and design
Page copy written first, designed second, reviewed section by section with the founders.
- Weeks 9 to 11
Build and launch
Component build, CMS modelling, analytics, accessibility pass and launch checklist.