Approach

As most of our projects do, our engagement with Gelest began with a strategic consultation on the why’s and hows. The TIF team then executed on a thorough competitive website analysis document that provided key usability metrics, functionality scope, depth of search, etc. We focused on 5 key competive areas in our discovery: Accessibility, Content, Design, Marketing, and Technology. We presented our findings and recommendations over two working days with the executive team at Gelest. Our findings compelled us to re-engineer the web architecture behind the Gelest site and develop a new foundation for the management going forward. This all laid the groundwork for a complete website re-do on a new responsive, feature-rich, custom WordPress backend with multiple integrations.

The result is a completely rethought and redesigned website born from deep insights gained in our analysis. Our methodology proved once again– “strategy before tactics”. In our efforts, we have built custom integrations with an external ERP system that manages over 4000+ individual SKUs. Our dev team also built custom WooCommerce plugins to manage 3rd party shopping carts and molecular drawing tools, built out extensive search functionality, and wrangled a catalog of ancillary content, reports, and publications. Since launching in May 2016, bounce rate has lowered by 5%, avg sessions are up by almost 2 minutes, and total new sessions and page views are up by more than 16,000 for the year. We continue work with Gelest to maintain the website, develop feature enhancements, and optimize performance.