We worked with a growing of artificial intelligence company that needed a modern, secure and scalable website that could keep up with their marketing needs and which could be adapted for the future. Their original website was built using a website builder platform and quickly came with problems that limited design flexibility, increased overhead of pages not adhering to their design system, marketing opportunities and overall scalability was holding them back. It was time for a secure and more robust web system to empower their growing needs and that allowed them to make some necessary UX improvements along the way. They decided to use Drupal with the Acquia Cloud and Hounder worked with them to re-platform and be successful for the future.
The Solution
Hounder worked directly with the marketing and design teams to build a cohesive and structured plan for migrating their website from a website builder to Acquia Cloud. We worked with the design team to craft and implement new UI and animation improvements that allowed them to engage with their visitors more and showcase the amazing things that they were doing. Hounder helped to adapt a product design guide into a reusable set of design components that allowed them to construct multiple different page structures more easily for their marketing team.
Our Process
Each project that we under take goes through our research and strategy process and for this security software company we worked closely with their team to establish a solid project plan that identified all areas that needed to be accomplished in order to achieve a successful launch.
Project Scope
This software security company needed a secure and scalable web presence for their current and future marketing needs and that could allow them to make quick edits while adhering to a strict component driven design system.
Define and build UX interactions and patterns
Migrate existing website to Acquia Cloud
Improved visitor engagement with custom website interactions
100+ page web design
Configured Drupal CMS
Component driven flexible content editor
Migrated blog, news, and video content
Training
Brand Strategy and Logo Explorations
After doing a full-week of discovery with the project team and it’s leadership, we quickly landed on a strong content strategy, displaying confident yet friendly and familiar tones. Exemplifying a high quality in education with a dedication to Christ-Like growth. So we got straight to work sketching out new logo concepts. After a few iterations, we came upon this fierce lion and shield concept. Pairing beautifully with a fresh new color palette and font treatment to display that bold, confident, yet welcoming tone that was identified in the early discovery meetings.
Layouts / Explorations
Shortly following the approved content strategy, we went all-in on researching and identifying the content and tools that visitors, parents, students, and donors needed to be successful. After a week of digging into the analytics of past site performance and user research, we began wireframing out new site taxonomies and users flows that would funnel the identified personas to the information needed.
Design / Development / Testing
We had a blast coming up with interesting ways to present the Milpitas story in a new and engaging light. We played a lot with some subtle animations to help draw the eye to key points of information such as "scheduling campus tours" and submitting applications. We also got some drone imagery shot on-campus as a welcoming site when first loading the page.
After several iterations, we finalized the design with Milpitas team and got right to work on the development sprints. Piecing each design component into a crafted element in the Blackbaud K-12 CMS allowed the Milpitas team to easily update the content and provide the ability to add new design elements in the future without having to go through duplicate re-design efforts. During these development sprints, we worked closely with our friends and partners at Blackbaud to carefully and thoughtfully ensure that all integrations with the Raisers Edge CRM system would flow nicely with the new custom site experience.
Result
We are thrilled with how this came out and excited for our friends at Milpitas as they continue to move forward in their digital transformation gaining a new foothold in their mission of making an impact on the world through excellence in Christ-Centered education.
Enterprise
