Continental Office had a problem: Its website needed a complete overhaul. The provider of customized workplace solutions had just refreshed its brand identity a few months prior, and the company website didn’t reflect this new brand.
And although Continental had migrated its site to HubSpot the previous year, the company still had no way of capturing leads for the sales and marketing teams from the site.
With updated corporate identity guidelines in hand and an eagerness to take full advantage of inbound marketing, the Continental team came to Kuno Creative for help building a dynamic, lead-generating website that better matched Continental’s modern image.
Here’s Continental’s story.
Continental’s website hadn’t been updated in almost six years, but attempting to redesign the site via the existing platform simply wasn’t an option. The outdated marketing software the Continental team was using had limited functionality, and since Continental couldn’t update the program, website features were breaking on a regular basis.
The company’s content management tools were also difficult to navigate, and the available templates looked old-fashioned. Its content management system (CMS) only allowed the team to make changes to website content—all social media and email content had to be managed in a separate software. The biggest issue, however, was the inability to capture leads on the site.
The Continental team needed an all-in-one solution to manage their demand generation and lead generation efforts across every channel. They needed a platform that could enable them to easily and effectively execute inbound sales and inbound marketing campaigns. They needed HubSpot.
So about a year before partnering with Kuno, Continental Office ditched its antiquated marketing tech and transferred its website to HubSpot. This was the catalyst the Continental team needed to kick-start the website redesign.
Continental began sending out RFPs to agencies (including Kuno). However, many of the agencies with whom Continental was corresponding weren’t familiar with the HubSpot platform. These agencies would have to learn how to properly use the software before they could even begin the redesign, which was a problem for the Continental team who had a specific launch timeline in mind.
Kuno, on the other hand, not only had HubSpot-certified technologists who already knew the best ways to leverage the HubSpot platform but also had a team of designers ready to create the kind of site Continental wanted and deliver it in the time frame requested.
Continental officially partnered with Kuno and the website redesign process got under way.
The Kuno approach to website design (called kunoXdesign) uses inbound best practices to create responsive and scalable websites that effectively engage and delight every visitor.
In the Discovery stage of the kunoXdesign process, the Kuno team interviewed two internal stakeholders at Continental to learn more about their desired website messaging. The Continental team also provided buyer personas and user profiles they already had, which Kuno used to gain a better understanding of their audience. During this time, Kuno also completed an in-depth analysis of Continental’s current website and its user experience (UX). We evaluated site performance and how it compared to competitor websites.
After presenting our findings, we began to further develop the redesign strategy, collaborating with the Continental team on overall site architecture and navigation. The objective was to design a site that would drive leads for all of Continental’s areas of expertise—furniture, floors, walls, services and branding.
We recommended replacing the low-funnel, brand-specific assets that focused on promoting Continental’s work with higher-funnel content offers that addressed broader, industry-related topics. At this time, the Kuno graphic design team strategized on how to create a better UX as well as improve the flow and categorization of the site pages.
Following these brainstorming sessions, the Kuno team developed a visual sitemap. From there, they built a simple wireframe for the homepage and navigation to ensure all site content would be organized in the most practical way.
Now it was time to begin fleshing out the site design, adding images and copy as well as incorporating Continental’s updated branding and logo. This stage of the process allowed the Continental team to get a better idea of the look, feel and functionality of the new site.
Once the site mock-ups were finalized, the Kuno development team used the HubSpot COS to build the website. The result was a responsive, mobile-friendly website that ensures Continental’s unique imagery is displayed correctly on any device.
After several months of hard work and collaboration between the teams at Kuno and Continental, the brand new www.continentaloffice.com went live.
2.png?width=1024&name=C.O.%20-%20Homepage%20(Old)2.png "Homepage-Redesign")
The previous version of the site was far from interactive. The only dynamic aspect was the hero slider, which rotated through a handful images promoting various blog posts and case studies. The page had minimal color, and the modules didn’t showcase the extent of Continental’s solutions.
.png?width=1024&name=C.O.%20-%20Homepage%20(Current).png "Homepage-Redesign")
Not only is the redesigned homepage more aesthetically pleasing and a better representation of the Continental brand, it has many new features, including:
The new homepage now exhibits everything Continental has to offer businesses. Visitors to the old site might not have known that Continental had a solution to fit their needs and so quickly would leave the site. Buyers now can quickly see the full scope of Continental’s services.
Updated navigation outlines the entire sitemap and incorporates the category-specific icons, which are used across the site. The website also tells a more comprehensive story about the organization and gives visitors a better understanding of Continental’s brand identity.
The homepage has two on-page conversion opportunities (the Contact Us form and blog subscription field) and links to another conversion opportunity (a landing page to download an eBook).
As previously mentioned, a mobile-friendly Continental site was essential. However, rather than simply designing a site where the images shrunk to scale when viewed on a phone or tablet, the Kuno development team built the website so images dynamically adjusted based on the visitor’s device. The goal was to create a UX that stayed consistent across desktop and mobile.
In the example below, the background in this section of the homepage actually changes depending on whether it is viewed on desktop or mobile:
.png?width=1024&name=C.O.%20-%20Great%20Spaces%20(Desktop).png "Responsive-Background-Image")
.png?width=640&name=C.O.%20-%20Great%20Spaces%20(Mobile).png "Responsive-Background-Image")
This effect is also used on interior site pages. As you can see in the next example, the triangles in the corner remain the same size regardless of the visitor’s device.
.png?width=1024&name=C.O.%20-%20Interior%20Page%20Header%20(Desktop).png "Responsive-Background-Image")
.png?width=640&name=C.O.%20-%20Interior%20Page%20Header%20(Mobile).png "Responsive-Background-Image")
Two of the most impressive changes to the homepage are in the “Our Expertise” and “Continental Cares” sections.
When a visitor hovers over one of the options within “Our Expertise,” the text transforms into an animated version of the category-specific icon.
As visitors scroll down to the “Continental Cares” area of the homepage, the statistics to the left of the photo begin counting up. This little touch helps to make the UX more interesting.
.png?width=1024&name=C.O.%20-%20Menu%20(Old).png "Website-Navigation-Redesign")
In addition to being misaligned with Continental’s branding, some options in the original menus were strangely worded and the overall layout was poorly organized. This made it difficult for visitors to find the information they needed.
.png?width=1024&name=C.O.%20-%20Menu%20(Current).png "Website-Navigation-Redesign")
In the updated navigation, the number of options has been pared down to focus only on the most-trafficked areas of the website, allowing visitors to quickly locate what they’re looking for.
To help make the UX consistent, the menu includes static versions of the category-specific icons. It also contains another Contact Us call-to-action (CTA).
.png?width=1024&name=C.O%20-%20Our%20Work%20(Old).png "Website-Redesign")
In the original site, nearly the same format was used for all interior pages, making the UX less engaging. The Portfolio page is a good example of this.
The previous Portfolio page displayed all projects in a single group, offering visitors no way to easily identify which example would be the best to use as reference for their own needs.
When a user clicked on one of the tiles, the next page listed only the basic statistics of the project (such as the square footage of the space and the services Continental provided) or a much-too-brief summary. None of the project-specific pages contained both statistics and a summary, and some pages included neither.
2.png?width=1024&name=C.O.%20-%20Our%20Work%20(New)2.png "Website-Redesign")
Continental’s updated Our Work page (previously Portfolio) shows the improved aesthetic of the site pages as well as some of the increased functionality added during the redesign process.
On this page, visitors have the option to filter the examples by industry, space type and expertise (furniture, floors, walls or branding), allowing them to see what kind of results they can expect based on their own requirements. When choosing an option from any of the dropdown menus, the page automatically updates to show only the examples that meet the visitor’s criteria.
After clicking on a thumbnail, users land on a page that offers more details about that particular project as well as the organization itself.
This page, along with all others within the site, also has a banner promoting the featured content offer and a Contact Us form at the bottom—two conversion opportunities (screenshot below).
3.png?width=1024&name=C.O.%20-%20Our%20Work%20(New)3.png "Website-Redesign")
.png?width=1024&name=C.O.%20-%20Contact%20Us%20(Old).png "Contact-Page-Optimization")
The previous Contact Us page offered visitors no way to reach out to Continental via the website. Visitors either had to call or email one of the locations to get in touch with anyone at the company.
.png?width=1024&name=C.O.%20-%20Contact%20Us%20(New).png "Contact-Page-Optimization")
Not only does the updated Contact Us page have an online form as well as the phone number, fax number and email address for each location, but it also includes links to download location-specific lookbooks, which offer users a sneak peek into each office space.
Kuno also added a new page to the site: Resources. Resources houses all of Continental’s downloadable content, including case studies, videos, brochures and infographics. This page also features the filtering option seen on the Our Work page, allowing visitors to narrow down choices by resource type and industry.
Following the launch of the redesigned site, performance has skyrocketed. Total website traffic increased by 103 percent year-over-year, and the number of net-new contacts jumped by 645 percent, from 38 to 283.
| Source | New Contacts |
|---|---|
| Organic Search | 130 |
| Direct Traffic | 95 |
| Referral Traffic | 50 |
| Social Media | 8 |
| Total | 283 |
These impressive numbers are the result of a more user-friendly, interactive website featuring multiple conversion opportunities, such as the Contact Us form and gated content in the new Resources. The site’s remarkable performance is also thanks to extensive search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
Continental plans to focus on gaining a better understanding of leads lower in the funnel—specifically marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs).
The team plans to develop a content strategy using blogs, ungated long-form pieces and gated content to support the promotion of three of their solutions:
The Kuno team is thrilled to be a part of Continental’s growth, and we look forward to helping them with their upcoming inbound marketing efforts.
