Bearon Manufacturing Family of Websites

Phase I: Discovery, Strategy and Consulting

During discovery, SmartAcre completed interviews with key stakeholders from Bearon Manufacturing and their brands along with gathering and reviewing available materials. With all of this information, SmartAcre conducted an analysis in order to more fully define the requirements and scope for this multiple web redesign project.

Next, SmartAcre continued with a search marketing assessment. This assessment is an evaluation of the existing websites, technology, and competitors to make recommendations for this project and continuous improvement. Steps taken in this assessment included:

• Evaluating current web analytics (if available)
• Installing and analysis of heat maps to better understand how the current sites were being used.
• Completing competitive, keyword, and search engine rank evaluation with SEO tools such as Moz and Semrush
• Evaluating the existing websites and competitors with OpenSiteExplorer from moz.com including backlink analysis, crawl error report, and search engine authority
• On-page implementation and SEO guidelines for development

To close out Phase I, SmartAcre pulled together a Website Strategy Document, which included all findings from the discovery phase, as well as provided a clear list requirements and recommendations for the remainder of the project.

Phase II: Branding, Architecture & Design

Once the final list of requirements were defined and agreed upon, SmartAcre proceeded with brand research and provided direction on presentation of naming, color, logos for the websites and how they would extend offline as well. Deliverables included:

• An online style guide
• Guidelines on messaging, tone and how each brand should be represented with content to ensure consistency occurs across each brand
• Direction for photography across all brands

We then focused on UX and information architecture for each website. Using findings from Phase I, SmartAcre determined how users would interact with each website, identified user flows, and laid the foundation for how the websites would convey Bearon Manufacturing’s brand messaging, marketing, and business objectives. This process aided in:

• visually planning the flow of the websites and marketing-to-sales process
• determining if content/messaging is being presented appropriately
• identifying placement of navigation and buttons, calls to action, and key features and functionality

The key deliverables of this step included an information architecture document and wireframes for unique page templates and highlight the following:

• Sitemap navigation, page taxonomy, organization, and user flows for key sections of the websites.
• Identify features, calls-to-action, content needs and/or functionality.
• Wireframes designs for home page and key secondary page layouts.
• Wireframes for corresponding responsive/mobile layouts.

Once the wireframes were approved by the client, SMartAcre proceeded with webpage design concepts for the homepage and internal pages that appropriately reflected branding, marketing, and business objectives while using UX and IA documents, input from Client, and review of needs identified in Phase I.

Phase III: Web Development

After the approval of all design concepts, SmartAcre moved forward with the programming and development of the front-end templates and back-end customization. WordPress CMS was used for all templates and pages, while WooCommerce was utilized for all eCommerce related pages and content. As these pages were finished, the SmartAcre team populated the content provided by the client.

During the website redesign project, SmartAcre also worked on setting up Bearon and it’s brands with HubSpot as a marketing automation tool and CRM. The team worked with Bearon to learn the current sales process and identify key members of that process. SmartAcre then provided recommendations on improving that process and then developed automation within HubSpot to make that process run smoothly.

These pages were then internally reviewed and then shared with the client in a staging environment for them to test and provide feedback. Once all pages were approved, SmartAcre proceeded with the launch process. This process needed to be coordinated appropriately as SmartAcre needed to launch four new websites that linked between each other in a uniform manner.

The Results.

1. Bearon Manufacturing and it’s brands are now unified under a similar look and feel, while still having aspects that make them stand out.
2. Each brand’s website links between each other, allowing Bearon to share all of it’s capabilities with its vast customer base.
3. Improved brand messaging, design, and user experience lead to an average increase of 13.88% for form conversions since launch