Stellar, a 100% employee-owned and operated manufacturer of high-quality work trucks and trailers, has acquired several companies over the years to grow its product line and expand its international distribution. After the acquisitions, Stellar was left to manage several website platforms with outdated content management systems and disconnected user experiences. Search engine compatibility was also an issue.
To provide customers with an optimal experience, we consolidated all online properties under one unified site. Products were reorganized to better align with user expectations by keyword research. My role was to reorganize and redesign their website. We used Flowmapp to create the sitemap. I typically use Figma, but we experimented with this since it had the ability to add page structure, notes and assets.
My objective was to design a navigation system that was simple and easy to use, with a maximum of three levels deep: category, product line, and product. The goal was to allow users to search for products either ‘by category’ or ‘by market’. Below are Figma designs of the search functionality, product mobile menu, and product desktop mega menu.
I created a nav component, so I could update the product category or market nomenclature. They were updated quite a bit, so that was a time saver. I also created Figma prototypes of both the desktop and mobile menus for testing and client review.
There were three product page templates to design: category, product-line, and single product. My goal was to simplify content, and make consistent across all product templates. One way I simplified content was to use an accordion on the product single template—allowing visitors to scan the page quickly and read what they are interested in.
Implementing hi-fidelity Figma wireframes, allowed us to revise layouts quickly, and once we got client sign-off, the design phase went fairly quickly, without a lot of revisions. At that point, it was just adding photography, graphical elements, and colors. I also created a global component library, as many sections were repeated throughout the site.
Since the launch of the new Stellar website, the metrics paint a picture of a more highly engaged audience. In the first three months, page views increased by 100 percent and the average pages per session rose from 2.5 to 5.7 pages. Additionally, online request-a-quote form completions increased over 370 percent compared to the same time period the year prior.
