Oyster and Zabal Media: Collaborating for Remote Hiring Success
We started working with the Oyster team in 2019 before they were incorporated. We started out by working with Jack Mardack, the co-founder, when they required a simple landing page to explain their business to investors and potential customers. We have come a long way since then. Oyster has now become one of the top companies when it comes to global hiring + growing your remote team. We currently have an ongoing retainer to be a contributing partner to their mission.
Understanding the business
Business goals
Oyster once had an early stage marketing website without any branding, proper ux/ui design, or product that was ready for production. Since then, we have worked with Oyster to bring all of their business requirements, marketing initiatives, and brand to life. They are now one of the top remote hiring companies in the world. They make hiring and growing a fully distributed team a breeze.
Business challenges
Early stage startups need to move fast and correctly. The Oyster team did not have any dedicated strategy, design, development, nor QA partners to help them scale. Once their rounds of funding were in place, they required partners that were an embedded part of their company and culture.
Asking the right questions
Research goals
How might we collaborate with the Oyster leads across departments to create a cohesive experience on their marketing website that encompasses all of the values that make fully distributed teams successful.
Global hiring
How to ensure that all employment agreements are up to par with local labor laws and include legal protection?
IP protection
Who protects your trade secrets with confidentiality and intellectual property agreements?
Hire quickly
How does the onboarding and starting process work while using the Oyster platform to get team members going?
Hire anywhere
How does compliance work to hire Team Members in 180+ countries with the terms and benefits expected in local areas?
Interface inspirations
Defining a visual direction
The Oyster team worked closely with a branding agency to explore new visual directions. The Zabal Media team took those visual directions and built on top of them to create new pages.
Creating the systems
Optimizing a new brand
Once the branding agency created the visual direction and provided graphics, we were able to define the design systems in both Figma and in the Webflow CMS.
Having a design system that works across both design and development environments greatly improved the speed and efficiency of our partnership with the Oyster team.
Exploring new layouts
Visual design guidelines
Colors
Work Sans
Evolving the brand
The Oyster brand is very unique and unlike their competitors. Their aesthetic direction is eccentric, which has been a new experience for us. Overall, the branding applies beautifully across all pages on the website.
Wilian is an awesome work partner who I've really enjoyed collaborating with. He brings the rare one-two punch of being able to translate business goals into website strategy and then bring it to life. Also he's just a generally rad guy who is easy to connect with and makes work fun.