Full Digital
Transformation

Lakefront Financial had built decades of trust through in-branch relationships and community investment — but their website told none of that story. Built in 2017 and never substantively updated, it was slow, visually dated, and structurally misaligned with how modern banking customers make decisions online. On mobile, the experience was effectively non-functional. Digital account sign-ups were running at just 1.2% of unique site visitors — competing for the same customers as fintech-native challengers while arriving with a 2017 website. The gap wasn't in their products or rates; it was entirely in how they showed up digitally.

After three weeks of discovery — competitive analysis across 12 regional and neobanks, 22 in-depth user interviews, and a full site audit — we rebuilt the brand narrative around what made Lakefront different: the human relationship. The new design system was optimised for financial services UX, emphasizing clarity and trust signals. The technical rebuild used Next.js with a headless CMS, and the digital account opening flow was rebuilt from 18 steps to 6, removing every friction point that didn't serve a regulatory requirement. Within the first week of launch, the impact was visible in the analytics dashboard.