WEBSITE REDESIGN

WWW.ARGUS.AERO
When I interviewed for the Marketing Specialist position at ARGUS International one of the first questions I was asked was:
"What do you think of the website?
My personality is pretty direct, but I have to admit I was nervous about speaking to something I found as a major negative in my first interview.  Nevertheless, my honesty won out and I told my future VP, "I think it needs a complete overhaul".
Challenge Accepted

the three main objectives

EASE OF USE

e-commerce

optimize for seo

FOCUS ON EASE OF USE

When I started with this website it hadn't been redesigned  in over 6 years.  It was time for a major change.  ARGUS wanted a site that was easier to navigate for their customers and easy to update for their employees.

PART 1 - EASY FOR EMPLOYEES TO UPDATE

Looking at these objectives, we decided to start at the beginning.  We modernized the new site with a new WordPress template.  As I searched for the right layout I kept all of the site's needs in mind, but focused on a template that would be easy for anyone in the marketing department to update.  Up until this point, Changes had to be made to the code for even the smallest update.  I found a template that was intuitive for easy updates. ​

PART 2 - MORE INTUITIVE NAVIGATION

The site we were designing from had grown with the company.  New products and company divisions were added until visitors had a hard time finding what they were looking for.  
The marketing team got together and brainstormed ideas for the perfect menu.  Questions had to be answered like: Do we want to highlight company divisions or products and services?  How can we make it easiest for our visitors to find all of the information they are looking for? and more.   For a company with 3 different divisions that have quite a bit of crossover when it comes to customer profile, highlighting our service categories was the best option.

UNCONVENTIONAL E-COMMERCE

ARGUS International has a variety of products, but not the type you would see in a conventional e-commerce store.  With services and products that range from consulting, to training courses, to  SaaS solutions, a conventional e-commerce store wasn't going to be the answer.  Most products have a cost that varies based on the buyer's specifications.  While some checkout solutions were straight-forward, like course registrations, others  needed a complex form and deposit e-commerce checkout solution.  

​To accomplish the e-commerce goals we started with the basic Woo Commerce platform.   The back-end of the site is managed like any other e-commerce store.  This allows ARGUS to add products, cap quantities, charge deposits, and eventually add recurring charges to the site.  Unlike other e-commerce stores, we scrapped the storefront.  Each product has a descriptive product page with form.  The client is then brought to their product page with checkout.  This allows us to collect important information and hot, marketing qualified leads for our sales reps.

OPTIMIZE for seo

The ability for customers to find a website is important to every company.  ARGUS wasn't ranking as high as we would have liked for their keywords.  This is stage 2 for ARGUS and still in progress.

ARGUS has a very specific niche.  After the redesign we found that the keywords weren't rating high enough on google to bring in the amount of organic traffic to meet our company goals.  We pivoted our SEO strategy and focused on Keyword research.  Back to the drawing board I went. 

I started by finding the keywords that described our products and changing the titles and back-end information to reflect these words.  While our keyword research is in-progress we are building out blog posts that connect to our pillar pages and utilize additional key words.  The blog posts bring value in 3 ways.  First, we are able to take advantage of additional key words connected to our site.  Second, ARGUS's  posts link to our pillar pages and collect information from our visitors with offers based on the funnel level that the post was written for.  Third, these posts allow us to target potential customers at different levels of the funnel.  We may post something high-level for new visitors that have just started their search and something similar, but more complex for a visitor that is close to buying.

Stage 2 will change the copy on the pillar pages to reflect the new keyword changes.  Essentially we will optimize our pillar pages with google keyword searches in mind.  I will update this site as the project continues.
"In addition to having strong digital marketing knowledge, Michelle has an innate ability to take abstract concepts and relay them visually, which proved invaluable in our organization. Michelle also is very proactive in evaluating environments she is in and developing a strategies to improve the effectiveness of the marketing department. Thanks for Everything Michelle! "
Charles Cunningham, VP Marketing & Sales @ ARGUS International Inc.

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©2020 Michelle Passey