Custom website design for one of Canada’s largest construction firms, Aecon.
Working with national brands that have a solid reputation is always a treat. Aecon’s marketing team reached out for an initial call to discuss their plans to enter the residential market with a newly created Green Energy Division called Aecon GES. After a thorough vetting process, we were delighted to partner with the Aecon marketing team to develop the new website.
Crafting a custom website design for a sub-brand is a unique challenge in any industry, no matter how big or small the spotlight is. Often, the brand shift is a product of creating appeal within a different audience, in this case, a dramatic shift from commercial to residential clients. There are subtle nuances within the transition from one design system to another that can make or break the user experience and drive success.
Our web design agency worked closely with Aecon GES to develop a thorough understanding of their target audience for the sub-brand planning for the shift from B2B to B2C. Crafting a new website for the Aecon GES sub-brand presented a unique challenge to adapt a widely recognized construction brand to the residential green energy market. Creating an engaging design that supported this shift required our team to lean into our decades of experience creating custom website design for big brands.
Website Design Goals
- Digital brand evolution – as one of Canada’s largest and most well-known construction firms, Aecon needed a sub-brand evolution to capture the new green energy division’s essence while staying true to the Aecon identity.
- User-Interface design – as the Aecon GES brand came to life, our creative team was tasked with creating a custom website interface design that was true to the core Aecon aesthetic while appealing to a residential audience.
- Custom WordPress development – to power the beautiful new website and provide the marketing team with complete control over every pixel, a custom WordPress backend would be developed.
- Systems integration – strict privacy and security requirements lead a number of systems integrations to maintain peace of mind and privacy for visitors and customers of the Green Energy Division. Our development team worked to integrate industry-leading privacy and security applications to manage the web-based communications within the new website to remain compliant.
- Search Engine Optimization – develop a brand new SEO strategy for the new domain by weaving our best-in-class, technical SEO strategies into the website design and development process.
The Web Design Process
Creating new websites as a partner to an existing brand and a nationally recognized one to boot requires careful planning and a load of experience to bring the creative and technical aspects together for a successful launch. The new Aecon GES website presented a unique challenge that our web design team tackled head-on by applying our time-tested 6-step web design process.
Carefully combing the data-driven competitive analysis our team relied on as analytics did not exist prior to the launch of the website, and conducting initial interviews with key project stakeholders, we developed a navigational plan for the new website. The site map design offered a visual way to collaborate with the marketing team and form a plan to guide website visitors from entry through lead generation and conversion points.
Our comprehensive wireframing exercise followed to explore and examine the new information architecture, which offered a look at each unique type of page within the new website. The UX design process allowed our designers to prototype and present contextual layouts for the marketing team to review and fully understand the foundation of the new website. By prototyping the user experience and conversion points throughout several possible user journeys, we could test out new ideas and time-tested strategies before transitioning to the creative design phase. This ensures that all stakeholders have input on the fundamental direction of the new website.
With the approval of stakeholders, our web design team got to work on designing the new website interface concept. Working through the conceptual phase focused on showcasing the creative in a variety of scenarios, we then expanded the UI design and developed the new design system. Working closely with the Aecon marketing team to fine-tune the UI design, all the unique page layouts, design elements and user interactions were polished to perfection.
