Rebranding of Merrill DataSite One

Erik Mills

2 min read

#DataSite News Update: May 28, 2020

Does it really make any difference for clients?

It’s always fascinating to watch how old-fashioned companies change their appearance because it happens very rarely. Most of them are quite conservative and prefer to stick to the same identity over the decades. Just think of Coca Cola, for example – they tweaked their logo a couple of times but that’s about it.

Merrill, on the other hand, was brave enough to change everything about the appearance of its data room – the name, logo, and the design of the website (also you can read here how the Securedocs website has changed). However, the provider didn’t change the name completely – it went from Merrill DatasiteOne to just Datasite. This just simplified the name for customers to remember it easier.

What about the design of DataSite?

The logo resembles the pixelated arch of the D letter and is quite recognizable. Merrill decided to stick to the pixelated design as all the icons on the website follow this style. The site itself looks much more modern now – it’s minimalist and simple, with bold highlights. Seems like Datasite decided to follow Material Design guidelines that are rather trendy today.

Although the design of the website doesn’t really impact much the experience users have with the data room, such a trendy style shows that Merrill is ready for changes and that the provider is eager to fulfill the needs of modern businesses. This redesign is the last stage of Merrill’s transformation – in 2018 the company went through the digital transformation. The aim was to make the data room more versatile and modern. Following this goal, Merrill completely went away from the traditional financial printing business approach and focused on improving their digital product to fit the growing needs of companies around the world.

With this bold and minimalist design, Merrill says, “We are not that old-fashioned company anymore, we are agile, and we can deliver advanced tech services.” As this provider evolved into a global fintech software company, it desperately needed a new identity that would display the changes. And now Merrill has it.

The software has also changed the appearance as we could see from new screenshots on the Datasite website. It looks very minimalist – simple flat and mostly duotone design with bright orange highlights and colorful graphs. It must be very easy to use such an interface as it doesn’t demand much resources, and its simplicity allows to navigate the functions effortlessly.