OVERVIEW
When Elite Comfort Solutions was acquired by Leggett & Platt, our team was tasked with working with ECS to bring their site up to L&P brand and content standards while also adding functionality and visual improvements to enhance the site’s appeal to consumers.
The ECS site before redesign.
MY ROLE
I was the sole visual designer and visual UX designer, and worked with the UX developer along with an Agile team of two back-end developers and a project manager under the supervision of our web team manager. I was responsible for the visual direction of the site, branding, producing any assets needed, and working with the development team on synthesis. I worked with our project manager in communicating directly with the client.
COMING TO A SOLUTION
Meeting with the client, our team discovered how the site was currently being used, and what the current user base was. We then worked with the client to develop revised goals for site usage and the user base ECS was aspiring to target.
One of the user journey maps created during the project.
THE SOLVE
Through this project we were able to create a site for ECS that maintained the functionality and the essence of ECS’s recognizable brand, while adding L&P branding and elevating the material to the new brand standards. We implemented new organization and functionality to meet the client’s goals.
CHALLENGES
Meshing an existing company with their own established branding into a larger entity is always a challenge. We opted to keep some of ECS’s branding alive in a new logo treatment, but pair that with L&P typography and color styles.
THE EFFECTS
The site after redesign was now more representative of ECS’s position in their market and their place in L&P’s corporate structure, all while meshing branding and adding functionality, accessibility, and responsiveness.
LESSONS
Choosing what goes and what stays is often a challenge when a site as it exists must change to meet a new role. Finding balance means working with a client to determine the core ideology and structure of their business and then determining how best to mesh that with what exists in our larger corporate portfolio.
A comparison of pre- and post-redesign mobile views.