Substance151 guided KCI Technologies through a comprehensive overhaul of its website. We improved the site architecture, developed significantly more intuitive and useful navigation, and modernized the design.
The new KCI website that Substance151 designed and developed is modern, user-centric, high-performing, flexible, and scalable to accommodate future growth and serves as the firm’s “always-on” marketing, business development, and recruitment tool.
Developing a Client-Centric Approach to Site Architecture
We began by reorganizing a confusing site structure and developing a new architecture and navigation that not only makes it easy for site visitors to find the exact information they are looking for but is easily scalable to accommodate future growth.
By developing a research-based, client-centric approach to site architecture and thinking through the visitor experience from their perspective, we established a structure that serves to provide site visitors with quick and easy access to relevant (to them) information.
We deployed several user-centric features, including the floating shortcut bar for quick access to what our research identified as the site’s three most frequently performed user actions: search, locations lookup and looking for job openings.
We streamlined the site navigation by incorporating a robust elastic search, which puts the information visitors seek at their fingertips. A prominently featured search bar on the homepage engages visitors in a conversation by asking, “What can we help you find?” This Google-like search functionality also allows the KCI marketing team to strategically curate what information gets served higher up in the site’s search results.
Modernizing the Design and Experience
The newly redesigned kci.com brings the KCI brand to life online. Every detail and micro experience was thoughtfully planned and meticulously executed.
A brightened color palette and a lot of white space add both energy and refinement. Carefully chosen to enhance the design, page animations create an immersive digital experience.
The redesign dramatically improved content flow and presentation. As fitting for an engineering firm, all information is organized using precise but flexible visual grids, which allow for both design consistency and differentiation between pages and content types.
The administrative backend takes advantage of the latest WordPress Gutenberg editing experience, providing the in-house team with a series of flexible content blocks that can create additional layout variations – from highly visual to highly practical – without involving the development team.
Morrissey Goodale, a management consulting firm for the AE industry, spotlighted the redesign in it’s “AE websites done right” issue and has the following to say about KCI’s new website:
[The website] gives off a sophisticated feel and speaks to a capable brand. Lively animations of the features on the home page draw attention, but the special effects don’t repeat once you’ve scrolled.
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Substance151 masterfully led our website redesign process from discovery through launch, including engaging our stakeholders to ensure the new website best fits the needs of our multi-disciplined firm. We are very pleased with the clean, modern, and intuitive design that allows us to easily scale the site with our growing business models.
