Smartcost — Rebuilding a PE Procurement Brand for a Niche B2B Audience

Client: Smartcost.io
Industry: B2B SaaS / PE Procurement
Deliverables: Framer Websute, blog CMS, brand
Services: UI design, Framer build

The existing Wix website was expiring and, more importantly, no longer matched the company's evolved positioning: from a general IT procurement service to a specialist PE procurement partner. The site needed to communicate credibility, clarity, and conversion to a sophisticated financial audience

The Challenge

The original Wix site was generic, dated, and misaligned with the niche PE audience Smartcost was targeting.

Niche pivot — repositioning from 'general IT procurement' to 'PE portfolio procurement specialist' required entirely new messaging architecture
Content credibility gap — the site lacked the dashboard UI, client proof points, and PE-specific language needed to earn trust with financial buyers
Blog SEO preservation — 10 existing blog posts with search equity needed migrating without losing rankings
Dual product positioning — balancing a services-led business with a growing SaaS offering in a single, coherent narrative

Key Outcomes

< 2 weeks

launch timeline

from brief to live site

10

blog posts migrated

with full SEO metadata

100%

deadline met

Before

Generic Wix site with outdated messaging
No PE-specific positioning or language
Weak visual hierarchy, no dashboard UI
Blog not optimised for SEO or CMS management
Misaligned with evolved business direction

After

Clean Framer site built for PE/finance buyers
Hero, sections and CTAs PE-niche specific
Dashboard mockup, testimonials, case study block
10 posts in native CMS with full SEO config
Scalable foundation for sub-pages and growth

Design Decisions

Dashboard as hero element

Rather than a generic stock photo, we placed a cleaned-up product dashboard screenshot as the primary hero visual. For PE buyers evaluating a software+services solution, seeing real product UI immediately answers the question 'what does this actually do?' — more effectively than any headline.

Primary CTA Anchor

The pricing model is a powerful trust signal for a risk-averse PE audience. We made it prominent throughout — not buried in a pricing section — to reduce friction and pre-empt the biggest buyer objection (ROI risk).

Working great on mobile screens

Every section was built and tested across mobile, tablet, and desktop. PE buyers don't only open links on laptops — a CFO forwarding the site to a colleague on mobile needed the same credibility read. Typography scale, spacing, and layout reflow were tuned at each breakpoint rather than relying on template auto-collapse.

Custom graphics to explain the product

Off-the-shelf stock imagery couldn't communicate what Smartcost actually does. We built custom UI mockups of the vendor dashboard — showing real data scenarios like upcoming renewals, YTD savings totals, and portfolio-level rollup — and integrated them as hero and feature visuals. The goal was immediate product comprehension without reading a word of copy.