Deepend gives Internet something to Yell about

Yellow Pages has appointed Deepend to help integrate all its on-line content under the Yell identity.

Deepend was appointed last month, after a six-way pitch, to redesign what are currently six Internet sites into the single Yell.com brand. The consultancy will work with Yellow Pages’ in-house technical and design teams.

Apart from its Yell consumer site, the company has websites which include the Business Pages site, the yellowpages.co.uk company information site and the direct marketing website, Business Database.

Deepend has been given creative licence to consider the complete look of a unified Yell site, including colour palette, navigation and functionality. But the Yell logo is likely to be retained for its brand equity, according to Yellow Pages marketing communications controller Nigel Marson.

“We are going through a constant process of enhancing our website. As part of that we have appointed Deepend to look at our business-to-business and business-to-consumer sites,” he says.

Marson says Yellow Pages talked to several Web design groups, some of them from traditional design backgrounds, some of them more technology-based.

“In the end we thought it was important to use a design company which actually does the design work in the medium in which it is to appear, rather than designing the look and feel off-line and then bringing it into the Internet world,” he says.

Marson declines to say when the site will be relaunched, but he says the project will be turned around “incredibly fast”.