



Situation: An Acquisition Prompts the Desire for a Scalable Content Framework and Improved Mobile Responsiveness
After acquiring Baseline, a provider of engineered irrigation solutions, HydroPoint needed to incorporate the Baseline brand into their overall website in a coherent way.
A challenge was the quantity of dense content, particularly case studies, in various formats, paired with the desire to have a scalable platform that could expand with additional content, within a framework that was replicable across all brands.
Top priorities were to generate and capture qualified leads and integrate them into the company’s Salesforce/Pardot system, and to make sure the new website, unlike their old site, would be 100% mobile responsive.
Solution: Focused Attention on Multisite Strategy, Complex Content Requirements and Multiple Integrations
Windmill established a pattern of weekly meetings to ensure ample time to talk through the complexity of the content requirements. Because the content was so dense, there were features / functionality that weren’t documented and discovered until later in the development process. When this occurred, Windmill prioritized these with the client to ensure we could meet deadlines.
The strategy was to create a multisite experience that would position HydroPoint as the overarching corporate brand and WeatherTRAK, Baseline and WaterCompass as sub-brands with microsites. This meant outlining content strategy for page types that would be applicable for all three sub-brands. For example, while WaterCompass is the smallest product line, and as a result has the least amount of content connected with it, the framework used on the other microsites is easily replicable when the client is ready to expand. Personas and verticals were targeted with very specific case studies and customer/application profiles accessible from the main navigation of each sub-brand’s microsite.
Many different content areas and formats presented a challenge in creating a site structure that would work for all three sub-brands and provide uniformity. The solution required complex custom taxonomy strategy and execution, and custom blocks serving related content throughout multiple databases.
An extensive redirect strategy is in place; this required comprehensive analysis of all existing HydroPoint web pages, as well as the old website, to make sure every redirect was mapped correctly, with a plan for an intermediate redirect if 1:1 content was not ready at launch.
Additional elements of the project included: uploading all product resources to SharePoint and then documenting on the new site (investigation into the best tooling for resource housing), Olark chat integration, Salesforce/Pardot integration for lead capture / lead gen, gated content management (for distributors), third-party integrations, extensive GTM goal tracking set-up, and extensive pre- and post-launch QA testing and remediations. Given the complexity and size of the content requirements, HydroPoint also elected for “white glove” content migration, meaning that Windmill was responsible for making sure all content was migrated successfully.
The completed website/multisite meets the client’s goals and objectives, with a scalable content platform and a seamless mobile experience.
Services Utilized
- Analytics and Insights
- Client Training
- Digital Marketing
- Paid Media
- PPC
- SEO
- UX Consulting
- Web Design & Development
Project Information
Client:
HydroPoint
Location:
1720 Corporate Circle Petaluma, CA 94954
Date:
February 5, 2020
Website:
hydropoint.com/