COMPLETE WEBSITE REDESIGN

For two years I was part of an ambitious website redesign for the official Germ-X Online store.  It launched recently, but the story of it’s design and development took some radical turns as the global marketplace shifted.

 

I was tasked with leading every aspect of its redesign including research, bridging stakeholder requirements, brand strategy, development/testing, integrating logistics and payment APIs, while simultaneously creating a company-wide design/development process and creating a tech/sales support process.

 

As the COVID-19 crisis continued growing, the personal and commercial sanitizer market landscapes shifted drastically.  The website redesign I created to cope with massively increased traffic and server loads produced immediate measurable results for the brand, and the company servicing the site.

For two years I was part of an ambitious website redesign for the official Germ-X Online store.  It launched recently, but the story of it’s design and development took some radical turns as the global marketplace shifted.

I was tasked with leading every aspect of its redesign including research, bridging stakeholder requirements, brand strategy, development/testing, integrating logistics and payment APIs, while simultaneously creating a company-wide design/development process and creating a tech/sales support process.

As the COVID-19 crisis continued growing, the personal and commercial sanitizer market landscapes shifted drastically.  The website redesign I created to cope with massively increased traffic and server loads produced immediate measurable results for the brand, and the company servicing the site.

The Brief

STARTING POINT

The original site was created 12 years prior to my project start with Top Marketing USA.  As technology advanced, the site was continuously falling behind in usability, SEO, and aesthetics.  The need to stay relevant depended on updating this site to current industry standards.

Design Goals

LINEAR + SIMPLE

  • Reduce on-boarding to under 30 second average.
  • Simplify sales funnel to reduce error rates.
  • Redesign touch points and remove FAQ section.

REDUCE SUPPORT

  • Restructure sales funnel to reduce technical support calls.
  • Create a robust shipment tracking system to reduce sales calls.
  • Redesign the Information Architecture to bring clarity.
  • Implement an automated email solution that updates users on changes in order statuses, payments, and shipping.

CUSTOMER TRUST

  • Update design language to meet customer expectations.
  • Make policies clearer and easy to locate.
  • Redesign site to match brand standards.
  • Build loyalty with automated tracking system.

Project Goals

  • Increase conversion rates and customer retention.
  • Save Top Marketing USA (the company managing the site and logistics at the time of project start) time and money by reducing customer support calls.
  • Boost SEO to attract more traffic.

NOTICE

All information expressed throughout this case study is either publicly accessible or matches established industry standards.  Proprietary technologies, partnerships, and processes have been intentionally obfuscated or omitted to preserve NDA compliance and company privacy.

Define Company and Customer

Through research with all stakeholders involved in the already existing site to clarify needs, pain points, and requirements to maintain a successful system I was able to start developing a strategy.  This included heuristic analysis, demographic studies, direct interviews, error rate analytics, and other KPIs.  An in-depth SWOT analysis was conducted but has been omitted for privacy reasons.

COMPANY SERVICES

  • Manage website and related APIs.
  • Provide direct sales and technical support to customers.
  • Warehouse products for direct sales.
  • Offer direct shipping solutions for orders ranging from one-offs to LTL/TL (Less than TruckLoad/TruckLoad).

STAKEHOLDER NEEDS

  • Accounting dept. required tracking tools and reports for all financial transactions.
  • Warehouse required robust customizable shipping reports and product tracking.
  • Customer support staff required an intuitive back-end system for troubleshooting customer errors as well as placing custom orders requiring real-time API integrations.
  • A clean and straightforward back-end architecture was needed to cope with changing demands revolving around website modifications.

DEMOGRAPHICS

  • Attract new customers who are unfamiliar with the processes of the webstore and provide a clear and intuitive ordering process.
  • Maintain existing customer trust by clearly addressing the dramatic change in site redesign.  Display new tools and how they simplify the user experience.
  • Clearly outline ordering processes for residential and enterprise level customers.

Understanding the stakeholder structure and their relationships with products is important to me. It helps define the design/development field and builds insight into who to involve, and how to research, throughout the entire design and development process.  Certain details have been omitted to preserve client privacy.

One of the best ways to get an idea of site issues is by talking with those who support it directly with customers.  I started here, compared perceptions to KPIs and analytics, then moved to consumer interactions to understand both sides of the issues.  We ultimately decided to abandon the current platform and move to a more robust set of tools.  Certain details have been omitted to preserve client privacy.

White boarding sessions involving rapid fire generalizations based on instinct provided valuable insight into the core issues with the original site and put forth a general empathy road map to work from in the design stage.  Certain details have been omitted to preserve client privacy.

The key terms fit into two categories:  Reduced direct interaction and simplified interface.  This directed following research and design paths.

Wireframes and Rapid Prototyping

DEVELOPMENT

With a clear starting point and a determined end point, a particular platform rose to the top in applicability.  Industry standard e-commerce sales funnels, information architecture, and empathy mapping started informing the overall design language leading me through the wire-framing and rapid prototyping process within a sandbox environment.  Certain details of this wire-frame were removed to protect the privacy of company partnerships, as have been the prototypes.

OH SNAP!

At the point when I started completing the design and structure in a sandbox environment, Top Marketing USA was bought out by MyBrand Promo.  I chose to follow in order to continue the various projects that I was working on.

Development Redirection

TRANSITION + REDESIGN

The core functions of MyBrand Promo remained very similar to Top Marketing USA.  The biggest differences were that MyBrand Promo wanted to use a different platform, far more stakeholders were now involved, and more robust reports and logistics processes had to be accounted for.  The sales funnel drastically changed and the the back-end accessibility, permissions, and security had to be compartmentalized and expanded to include more stakeholders.  The process for the redesign/development follows that of before.  These implementations have been omitted to preserve proprietary polices, technologies, and partnerships.

OH SNAP! 2.0

During the redesign process the COVID-19 crisis started taking effect.  The original site was starting to fail in ways not predicted and customer support calls increased 1000%.  The logistics strategy that was already in place was failing.  At this point, we chose to revert back to the previous design solution since it was already very close to completion.

Climate Shift

A new deadline for launch was put in place to rapidly adjust to the shift in consumer behavior.  The core functions were already in place on the site but certain verbiage and funnel aspects had to be adjusted.  These changes are listed below.

NEW EMPATHY MAP

  • Customers are now searching for products to counter crisis and every other supplier had ZERO inventory.
  • Products were cut from the full line and reduced to most searched items.
  • The focus of terminology shifted from commercial-centric to mass consumer empathy.

NEW SEO STRATEGY

  • 301 Redirects were implemented throughout the old site to bypass wait time for Google search results to match the new site location.
  • Key terminology was adjusted to match CDC guidelines and customer search terms.

NEW TRUST PLAN

  • Address the new site look when popup stores were flooding Google searches to maintain credibility and authority.
  • Address the continued pricing strategy while popup stores were price gouging.
  • Address the confusion about which products may kill the COVID-19 virus and which products may not.

Details

TRUST

This simple statement at the top of the page addressed many issues:

“To better meet the needs of our customers, we have updated our webstore.  We’re the same great store with the same great prices, but we’re more focused on creating a better experience for our customers.”

  • Address design shock.
  • Address price gouging.
  • Strengthen customer rapport.

CLARITY

  • The alcohol content was included to clear confusion and misinformation floating around in the media.
  • Stock level tool was implemented to reduce sales calls.
  • Bulk order options were removed to compensate for server loads and eliminate a rep touch-point bottleneck during crisis.

Results

The launch has proven to be successful even with the dramatic pivots and the COVID crisis continuing.  The SEO strategy not only maintained easy access to the site, but the site itself quickly reached the first page in Google key searches.

 

The KPIs are skewed due to the current pandemic, but the two that stick out the most are the now perfect server uptime and the customer call rate which dropped below previous rates even with the current market shifts.  All targets for security, accessibility, reporting, and stakeholder requirements were met.

 

I did all this while building an extensive company wide process for building sites, troubleshooting them, and updating the technologies invovled.

The launch has proven to be successful even with the dramatic pivots and the COVID crisis continuing.  The SEO strategy not only maintained easy access to the site, but the site itself quickly reached the first page in Google key searches.

The KPIs are skewed due to the current pandemic, but the two that stick out the most are the now perfect server uptime and the customer call rate which dropped below previous rates even with the current market shifts.  All targets for security, accessibility, reporting, and stakeholder requirements were met.

I did all this while building an extensive company wide process for building sites, troubleshooting them, and updating the technologies invovled.