Astec
One Cohesive Site Brings Rebranding to Life for Astec
Challenges
Americaneagle.com was engaged by Astec as part of a broader corporate branding initiative. The organization’s website was identified as a primary focus of the efforts toward establishing one cohesive brand across its entire portfolio. The new site would merge 16 separately-branded websites and hundreds of products into one unified experience.
Astec was confident that Americaneagle.com was the right partner for the development of their rebranded website. With expertise in a wide range of digital solutions, the digital agency assessed the business portfolio and options to best serve Astec’s growing needs for integration and scalability within a defined budget. Sitefinity was identified as the right platform to serve its current and future needs.
The Americaneagle.com project team was given a tight three-month timeline to define key functionality, structure business-driving content, and then build, test, and manage content-building efforts. The launch was planned to coincide with a large corporate event that had been scheduled to introduce the new, unified brand.
Solutions
The new site, combining all the company’s offerings, multiplied the breadth of content and number of products exponentially. A new product module was built to display all necessary product information in a consistent way, highlighting key details such as specification tables, downloadable resources, and key product features. The Module centralized all Astec products into one site experience. Advanced search capabilities within Hawksearch were also deployed to ensure an efficient and intuitive avenue for users to quickly find what they need.
A tool was created to allow Astec customers to search nearby dealers based on a desired product type and geographic location. With it, users across the globe would be able to efficiently search for dealers and representatives via country segment, such as state, province, or territory, and zip code selections.
All former site domains would be redirected to the new site. Americaneagle.com anticipated that the first time each visitor attempted to go to their regularly-frequented URL, the redirect would be quite unexpected leading to confusion and even distrust. To help mitigate that shock factor, Sitefinity’s content personalization tools were leveraged. The new site would recognize a redirect and present a prepared alert at the top of the homepage specific to the brand of the referring URL. This helped to ensure the user that, although the experience looked different, they had arrived at the appropriate destination. A prominent banner image, which was also determined by the referring URL, would feature a piece of equipment from the former URL as well. Astec and the development team placed a high value on the comfort of familiarity.
The new website, also hosted by Americaneagle.com, successfully launched on schedule to replace the previous 16 subsidiary websites. Dealers, customers, suppliers, and consumers are finding detailed information about the company, its product offerings, and industry resources in one unified, seamless location.
