Creating an intelligent digital experience, tailored to customer needs
Client: ABB
Role: Product Design Lead
Agency: Wunderman Thompson
Year: 2020
Designing a cutting-edge, industry-leading, and future-focused website experience for a platform that hosts hundreds of thousands of products and pages is no mean feat.
ABB aimed to significantly enhance their web channel's ability to market services and products and boost sales. To achieve this goal, it was essential to understand the needs of the customers and assist them in navigating through the extensive website.
Objectives
Performed thorough functional and experiential audits of the current ecosystem, comparing it against industry competitors for benchmarking purposes.
Implemented a comprehensive UI overhaul, incorporating an atomic design system that aligns with the revitalised ABB brand, to enhance the overall user interface and experience.
Developed intelligent solutions to provide personalised and tailored user experiences.
Auditing the ecosystem
We conducted a thorough crawl and audit of 11,000 pages to gain a comprehensive understanding of the existing ecosystem and its page hierarchy. In the process, we identified and evaluated 32 websites, subdomains, microsites, and portals.
Our analysis revealed inconsistent user experiences and navigation across the ecosystem, leading to fragmented and confusing user journeys.
These findings highlighted a clear absence of standardised guidelines, governance, and structure in how the sites and pages were organized and maintained.
Analysing the page experience
We performed AI-driven eye-tracking analysis and clarity assessments on key ABB pages and comparable templates from competitor websites.
Additionally, we benchmarked other critical metrics such as accessibility and page speed to build a comprehensive picture of how ABB’s user experience currently stacks up against the competition. This analysis helped us pinpoint priority areas for improvement.
Through this process, we carefully identified the essential components required to deliver a cohesive and engaging user experience.
Where gaps existed, we designed new components to ensure a complete, adaptable solution that meets the evolving needs of the ecosystem.
For each template and component, we created detailed wireframe specifications outlining their structure, purpose, interactions, and editorial requirements-providing clear guidance for consistent implementation across the platform.
Through our analysis, we found critical issues to be prevalent across the ABB ecosystem
01 The cluttered and noisy content on the page overwhelmed the user experience.
02 A fragmented and disparate ecosystem caused significant disorientation in many customer journeys.
03 Users found it frustrating to navigate the numerous site pages to find what they needed.
Design system creation
In close collaboration with the ABB internal team, we developed an atomic design system that reflects the revitalised ABB brand, enabling efficient and scalable growth to support the needs of users and editors across the entire ecosystem.
Our design approach was inspired by Swiss design principles, focusing on objective simplicity through clean, unembellished visual communication that ensures clarity and consistency throughout the system.
A tailored experience
Visitors can easily identify themselves, quickly locate their relevant industries and solutions, and access information presented in a clear, concise format-significantly enhancing their overall experience.
To support this, a multi-level navigation system was developed, providing users with a fast and comprehensive overview of ABB’s offerings within specific industries.
Locating relevant and interesting content
On-page signposting was utilised to provide context through engaging imagery and succinct copy descriptions, facilitating user orientation and decision-making across ABB's extensive portfolio of products and services.
Outputs
Ecosystem audit
Page experience audit
Competitor benchmarking
User and stakeholder interviews
UI and branding
Design system
andy@neonink.co
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Andy Marciniak