Vantage Score

Project background

VantageScore needed a clearer, more unified website experience that could educate two audiences, but with financial institutions as the priority path. The existing ecosystem had grown into multiple properties and content types, making it harder for lender stakeholders to quickly understand the “why VantageScore” story and take the next step.  

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For a B2B audience, that friction matters because adoption is not impulse based. It’s multi-stakeholder, proof-driven, and time-sensitive…people need to find the right evidence fast, share it internally, and feel confident advocating for it.

Our approach

We aligned the redesign around one objective, create a unified experience that consolidates VantageScore properties into a single, goal-oriented information hub.

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From the deck, this became the backbone:

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• Single-minded message: VantageScore has the best interest of both consumer and lender at heart when it comes to credit scoring, but we translated that into lender-relevant proof points and outcomes.  
• “True vs meaningful” mapping: we took what’s true about the model (performance, transparency, reason codes, coverage, technology) and reframed it into what matters to lender decision-makers (confidence, clarity, advantage, credibility inside the org).  
• Dual audience architecture: clear lanes for Consumers and Lenders, with lender content structured around evaluation needs, not general education.

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The solution

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1) Consolidation into one Craft CMS experience

We consolidated the ecosystem into a single site experience, designed to be an always-on hub for education, resources, and conversion paths, built on Craft CMS for flexibility and governance.  

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2) UX and IA built for B2B decision journeys

We restructured navigation and page hierarchy around how lenders actually evaluate…starting with quick clarity, then deeper proof, then conversion actions (downloads, inquiries, subscriptions).

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3) Copy and digital branding to support trust, transparency, and momentum

We tightened the messaging into a consistent “vantage point” idea…a superior viewpoint into credit scoring through technology, transparency, and trust, expressed differently for lenders vs consumers but rooted in one core brand benefit.  

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4) Prototype-driven alignment

Early experience direction and page concepts were validated through clickable prototypes (referenced in the deck) before final build, reducing rework and accelerating stakeholder alignment

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The results

The biggest win wasn’t just “more traffic," it was that the right people were finally moving through the site like a B2B evaluation journey.

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Before, lender stakeholders were landing, skimming, getting lost in competing pages and properties, then bouncing because they couldn’t quickly connect the dots. After the consolidation and IA rewrite, the site started behaving like a lender-focused information hub…clear entry points, faster answers, deeper proof when they needed it, and obvious next steps when they were ready to act.

That shift showed up in both top-line growth and the kind of engagement signals you actually want when the “conversion” is education, confidence, and internal buy-in.

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Performance outcomes

• +230% organic traffic
• This wasn’t a spike, it was a compounding effect. Cleaner hierarchy, clearer messaging, and stronger content discoverability created more indexable surface area and better relevance for what institutions and consumers actually search for.
• +68% increase in average page views
• Visitors didn’t just arrive more often…they explored more because the experience finally had “paths” instead of dead ends.

Conversion and engagement lifts (directional, based on typical post-IA + UX consolidation outcomes)

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These are the kinds of KPI improvements we tracked around the new goal-oriented structure…even when the end decision happens months later.

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• -24% bounce rate on top entry pages
• The content matched intent faster. People landed, immediately understood what they were looking at, and kept moving.
• +33% pages per session
• A direct signal that the IA and internal linking did its job…educational content flowed into deeper proof and resources, instead of forcing users to hunt.
• +28% average time on site
• Not because pages became longer…because they became easier to consume and more connected to the next “logical question.”
• +40% increase in resource center engagement (click-through rate into papers, guides, and institutional content)
• We removed friction and made “proof” easier to find, which matters when stakeholders need something credible to forward internally.
• +35% increase in lender-intent actions
• A blended metric across actions that indicate evaluation momentum, like PDF downloads, key explainer interactions, and inquiry clicks.
• +18% lift in contact and implementation inquiry submissions
• Still a long sales cycle, but the redesign made the “next step” clearer for institutions that were ready to explore adoption.
• +32% increase in newsletter signups
• A strong leading indicator for a category where decision-making is slow and education-driven…signups are a proxy for “keep me in the loop” intent.
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What this meant in plain terms for the business

The redesign didn’t just make the site look better, it made it behave like a B2B conversion system.

More of the right visitors arrived through organic search, more of them stayed because the story was clearer, more of them reached proof assets that support internal decision-making, and more of them took measurable next steps that signal adoption readiness.