Our Work
Our Largest Website Redesign: Global Heat Treatment Manufacturer
About Ipsen
INDUSTRY: Expertly engineered vacuum and atmosphere furnaces
This client is a global manufacturer of heat treatment furnaces, industrial vacuum furnaces, atmosphere furnaces and supervisory controls for thermal processing markets. Some of these markets include aerospace, automotive, medical and heat treating with their customer bases being primarily in the U.S., Germany and Asia.
Results
Created a new website with a fresh and modern feel with an easy user experience and specialized translation for their customers globally.
User Increase
Session Increase
Kicking Things Off
In the summer of 2021 the goBRANDgo! team began working on what would now be the largest website project we’ve ever done. To kick off this project the go!-mates on the client team went to to visit the client facility. They had a tour and really took this as an opportunity to learn more about the business and furnaces. This would help for the execution of the project as this visit would provide better insight and understanding to what this manufacturer does, their team culture and business style. Following this visit, the team got right to work on the website redesign.
The Project
Putting UX First
The old client’s website was outdated with limited user functionality. They wanted the new website to be easy to use with a fresh and modern feel. The goal of this redesign was to be much less cluttered with content, focus on atmospheric and vacuum furnaces and pull users in within the first few seconds on the site. In order to do so, one of the objectives included restructuring the way their products were showcased. The team realized that photography alone wasn’t going to be good enough to give the concept that the client was reaching for. Instead, they worked with a 3D artist who did 3D renderings, giving diversity and movement to really ensure that new age and modern feel.
The Rebrand
An essential element to this website redesign was a rebrand. Updated branding is not something that is usually included in a website project. However, as the team moved down the timeline of this project the branding really became its own pillar and a key component to allowing for this project to succeed. The branding remained in tune with the ‘modern’ goal by staying very fresh and minimal.
As part of the branding one of the steps was ensuring that the colors chosen were not one sided and catered to the different countries that would use the site. With the colors chosen being red, white and blue there had to be a lot of leverage to make sure it didn’t look too ‘USA’ driven. Other pieces of the branding included choosing a typeface which took a lot of time for the team to decide on. The typeface finally chosen was not only German inspired but was purchased specifically for the client. The designers also created six custom icons specific for them as well.
An Ease of Translation
One of the biggest challenges to solve in this website redesign regarded the language and translations. The original client website was multilingual that translated into five different languages. When a user changed the language, it would take them to a completely different domain with a different experience and inconsistency. Reframing this on the new site was a challenging and time consuming process. On the new site the go!-team wanted to be able to keep key phrases and words from being translated automatically in an unwanted way. They also wanted to ensure that terms specific to the industry and complex concepts were going to translate in a quality and easy way.
On the new site, the team merged those five different sites into just one. When a user changes the language it remains on the same domain but translates with the same experience across all language choices, rather than directing to an entirely new domain. The translation on the site now is much more advanced than the original. Rather than just changing words over, it really integrates slang and ensures that it truly makes sense to users. Our team’s biggest focus was making sure words were corrected globally and that each piece is always translated in the correct format. One of the ways they did so was by working closely with one of the client’s German employees since 50% of their customers live in Germany.
Other pieces our team completed included bringing light to the parts and services aspect of the brand. This branch was formerly viewed as being an external arm of the company. The team made sure that with the website redesign this was now viewed internally. The team also condensed the content they had. While they wanted to include as much as they could, they wanted to keep the site focused on being user centric.
New User Increase
Request Forms Submitted Increa
Sites merged into one
Results
The new site launched in June 2022. The deliverables of the project ended up being spot on to the goals planned in the proposal and initial scope with the client. Some of the results since the launch of the new site include a large increase in users and page views within the first 6 months of the launch. There is also a significantly more amount of traffic to the client’s site than the old one.
Another huge improvement is the amount of forms submitted on the site. The original site had five different request a quote forms. On the new site our team turned it into just one form that was confined based on the page the user comes from. This has made the process much more streamlined for users and as well as the client’s sales team.
Our team created not only a very modern and cool website for the client but also learned a lot internally. Most importantly, with this being the first time to have two designers on a website project, it was a great learning experience to what that can look like for future projects. The team also shared other learnings such as understanding terminology from a client’s perspective and geotargeting.