Columbus McKinnon

A company with a growth-by-acquisition strategy needed a modern, re-imagined solution to more easily accommodate the on-boarding of new brands.

Project: CMWorks.com – SPEC

Columbus McKinnon was growing exponentially by acquisition, but their existing web strategy couldn’t easily accommodate new brands or display the depth of their product offerings.

Challenges

  • Present CMCO as a house of brands in the crane and hoist technology industry
  • Provide a site structure that will easily allow for the addition of newly acquired brands and products
  • Allow users to search for products across all brands or within specific brands, accommodate all shopping scenarios
  • Accommodate the distributor model when it comes to sales, and easily connect users to their most convenient buying options
  • Guide users to the best equipment with subtle personalization based on search and browsing behavior

My Role

UX Architect and UX Designer, defining the user experience and creating a spec design for a sales opportunity

Wireframes

The most important goal of the spec wireframes we created was to demonstrate how their products could be organized and navigated, and how their various brands could still have their own presence underneath the overarching umbrella of Columbus McKinnon. We created sample wireframes for the Homepage and a Brand Landing page to help clarify our strategy.

Tools

Axure Pro

Features & Solutions

  • Streamlined navigation featuring a powerful search solution
  • Multiple methods and paths to finding products and brands
  • Dedicated area to promote the family of brands and to present the complete picture of CMCO without taking up too much valuable real estate
  • Focused areas for finding distributors to encourage conversion, or finding support, which was a top user concern according to our research
  • Brand Landing page acts as an alternate homepage for specific brands or marketing campaigns

Designs

We designed two versions of the homepage to demonstrate the possibility of personalizing certain page elements based on click-path or incoming search term, as well as a single Brand Landing page to show how their various brands could still live independently within the site structure without losing focus on CMCO as the parent company.

Tools

Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD

Features & Solutions

  • General billboard can be personalized by industry or product line
  • Other content can be personalized based on what is already known about what the user wants to see (e.g. displaying featured products versus featured industries)
  • Brands can be pre-filtered based on user preferences or collected data
  • Mega-menu navigation accommodates multiple methods for finding products including by category, industry, or brand
  • Brand Landing page shows how unique brands can easily fit into this structure and style without losing their own identity

Original Website

The Result

The original design and structure for CMWorks.com suffered from navigation overload and a lack of focus. The new version of the design provides all of the same content and options in a more organized layout that can be personalized, translated, and optimized.