In this episode, you’ll learn how to emulate the success of the world’s most prestigious consulting firm, McKinsey.
McKinsey’s homepage is the consulting website discussed in this video.
[Slides]Transcript
Welcome to Consulting Website Design Episode 2 – McKinsey.
In this episode, we’re talking about the most prestigious consulting firm in the world and their website.
If you Google “most prestigious consulting firms” you’ll often see McKinsey as number 1.
I always like to look at the websites of brands that are considered “prestigious” or “high-end,” because their website is a key part of what helps maintain their prestige.
Let’s head over to the McKinsey & Company Website.
Your instant reaction to McKinsey’s website is that it’s professional, very clean, and prestigious.
In this video, I don’t want to talk about aesthetics. Even though that’s important, I want to dig a bit deeper here.
Consider this: McKinsey has the budget and connections to hire the best designers in the world. So we’re dealing with a firm that can hire the absolute best of the best.
I think it’s safe to say that McKinsey wants to maintain their position as the #1 most prestigious consulting firm in the world.
Having to maintain such a position is a problem that their website helps solve.
What can we learn from reverse-engineering their website to find out what’s important to them, and how they go about using their website to solve their problems?
To make this point clear, I’m going to strip down their homepage to its essentials.
First I’m going to get rid of the navigation.
And then I’m going to get rid of the footers.
Now I’ve stripped down the homepage to its absolute bare essentials.
Let’s see what we’re working with here.
The first section, their hero section, takes you to some of their content on employee performance — so it’s essentially thought-leadership.
In this second section, we have a featured article, we have some trending topics, we have their most popular articles — and again, this takes you to more thought-leadership.
In this third section, new at McKinsey, here are three of their latest articles — and again, more thought-leadership.
In this last section, we have a call to action for potential employees so they can get more resumes and hire more consultants.
I think it’s pretty clear that the first dozen or so links and 80% of their homepage, and the first 3 sections of their homepage, takes you to their content. I think that’s very important.
Consultants become prestigious, like any other business, through a great service.
But in the case of the consultant or firm, their service is their expertise.
Your though-leadership and articles are what demonstrate your expertise, your thinking, and ultimately, your service.
This is how the best designers in the world have allocated this critical real-estate on McKinsey’s homepage to solve the problem.
And I really like this quote from Mike Monteiro’s “You’re My Favorite Client“.
When you hire a designer, you’re not hiring a pair of hands. You’re hiring a mind that’s been trained to solve problems in a way you can’t.
You didn’t hire a designer to make your buttons blue, headlines big, or slideshows look click-y. You hired them to meet a business goal.
If you thought design was about making things look pretty, that’s our fault as designers.
For better or for worse, designers adopt the identity of “creatives” and are great at making things look good, but design has and will always be about solving problems.
You need to use that space to build trust with your prospects, draw interest to your thought-leadership, build a prestigious brand, hire top talent or whatever your problems are as a consultant or small firm.
Action Step
Today’s action step is to really think hard about your consulting website.
Write down a list of some of the problems or goals you want to acheive in your business (not just your website), and then compare this list to the homepage of your website.
Is your homepage designed to actually help you reach some of these goals? Have a think about it.
And McKinsey’s design probably won’t work for you, because they don’t need their website to generate leads for them.
But, if you’re an independent consultant or small firm, that’s something your website should absolutely be doing.