Houghton International

Redesigning Houghton’s website to accommodate their vast, international product offerings

Overview

Houghton International is the global leader in industrial process fluids. With a robust presence around the world, including operations in over 25 countries, their customers include thousands of the world’s most advanced and specialized steel, aluminum, automotive, aerospace, offshore, can, mining, and metalworking companies. Houghton’s high-performing, innovative and sustainable solutions are backed by best-in-class technology, deep process knowledge and customized services.

Challenge

In 2016 Houghton International came to O3 World with a desire to redesign their current website, which at the time was outdated and structurally broken. Through discovery, we learned that we needed to implement an information architecture that provided each geographic region with relevant product offerings. These products needed to be highly searchable by application, industry, and solution - and of course, in every regional language. Aside from structure and functionality of their digital solution, Houghton was also looking to connect with their global customer base and expand their user base by driving lead generation.

Design process

Throughout this website redesign, I worked closely with my team at O3 World and my clients at Houghton International. We kicked off with two exercises: stakeholder interviews and a visual exploration. In the interviews, we learned about what was important to our stakeholders; we uncovered what their biggest concerns and pain points were and where they may have had specific expectations. In the visual exploration we identified an initial concept, tone, and imagery application preferences for a design approach. These initial artifacts helped us educate on design and align as a group.

Once discussions around the visual exploration were complete, we designed a style tile board based on feedback we heard. This helped us illustrate to our partners how design choices materialize and it also introduced them to the concept of a component design system for the site. Simultaneously, we had begun work on an updated sitemap and IA based on a full site content audit and feedback from our stakeholder interviews. The big challenge here was around how to organize the products, so much of our time was spent thinking through different ways of navigating this content. As a result, we produced various annotated wireframes which covered each screen template. After much back and forth with our stakeholders, we were able to move on to look and feel of the site.

The way in which multiple languages would render in the design was a consideration from the start, so we prototyped areas of the site where the most complexity was visible and tested various languages along the way.

Once the initial sample design screens were approved, we built a full component library for desktop and mobile screens.

Solution

Houghton International’s redesigned website organized 1500+ products and accommodated 13 different languages across 22 international regions. With that, we delivered a sitemap with a restructured IA, defined page patterns and reusable page layouts, UI for each different type of page, and a robust asset library with visual components.

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