Objective
Sterling Corporation was seeking to refresh their web presence to re-assert their well known high standing in the logistics and moving industry while educating their visitors of their new unified presence.
Process
Below is a summary of our Discovery Phase of the Sterling website redesign. If you would like to see the entire projects summary from plan, design, and build check out this link here to IMarc's portfolio.
Stakeholder Interviews
From stakeolder interviews we identified Sterling had three existing sites that needed to to come into one unified location. Before making any strategic decisions were made, a baseline understanding had to be laid out about who and what Sterling Corporation is.
- Sterling Corporation is:
- The largest white glove mover and professional logistics provider in New England for homes and offices with capabilities of handling local to cross country relocations of regular to high end commodities.
- They do:
- Logistics Planning - How stuff gets where it needs to go
- Commercial Moving - Moving the stuff in a business to the same building or a new location
- Residential Moving - Moving people, home, or employees
- Their audience is:
- Transportation Managers Homeowners and Employees.
- Corporate Planners/Office Managers
- Homeowners and Employees
- Keywords to describe them:
- Premier
- Efficient
- Cost Effective
- Secure
- Reliable
Content Audit
Like most projects I worked on, we performed UX Baseline Audit to help stack Sterling up against their competition in key categories. We would run page speed tests, tab through all mobile pages, and see what they process was like completing predetermined tasks stakeholders would outline to us to understand the Information Architecture better.
Sales & Marketing Analytics
The last part of our Discovery process was to talk to the Sales & Marketing team. As the website is used as a tool for those that are sent here on their own, we had to consider the other side of the coin - the sales people who use the website to sell someone over the phone. There were two pieces of information that were core to the projects direction that we recieved from Sterling during Discovery that stood out to us from their Sales & Marketing department:
- The sales department had a 90% chance of closing a deal with a potential customer if they could get them on the phone. To us, this meant that there needed to be 0 friction between those that may be considering talking to someone at Sterling for assistance with a move.
- After an online form was completed, the sales department had a 37% chance of closing a deal with that customer. Like the previous metric was impressive. What this meant to us was forms don't need to be foced into a users journey, but for every time a potential customer wanted to contact the company by any means besides phone, the amount of friction between the start of filling out that form and completing it needed to be an absolute minimum.
Themes
The last piece of our Discovery process was to present themes. Themes help guide the Strategy part of the project because as we make interations with the client on the Sitemap and eventually Wireframes, it's helpful to remind ourselves what we are marching towards with our work. Here were the themes:
- Bringing three websites into one centralized home would be tough, but aligning with the three primary offerings (Logistics Services, Commercial Moving, and Residential Moving) would provide the best paths for our audiences to find what they need.
- Showing visitors that Sterling is one of the longest, most qualified, and well-established moving and logistics companies in New England would help define what we call "The Sterling Difference" conveying value to our visitors.
- Creating a quick, easy, and logical lead submission process on the new Sterling site needed be a staple in the new design. The sales team was confident that as long as they could get potential customers on the phone they could convert them, so we prioritized closing deals as factor in how lead gen was handled on the website.
Result
I initially thought during the sitemap portion of the project that presenting a sitemap with two tabs separating the core business entities of the company right at the top of the page was risky. Few modern websites choose to so distinctly tell the user "this section is for you, and this one is for another type of person". To my surprise the client responded positively to the sitemap as they were looking to make a bold statement to their customers that yes, they can really move anything anywhere, but their reputation is fundamentally based on their core business moving services solutions. It felt really rewarding to work with a client who was willing to trust me as we were taking a calculated leap together positioning them in this new direction.
This was easily one of my favorite pieces of professional work because it saw nearly our entire UX process through to the finish and the development team building the website code built the website excactly as we promised it. The client was extremely impressed! The new Sterling Moving website can be seen here.
Appendix
Process images can be seen below.
