Sitemapping a Hidden Interior Champion

Erik Scholz -

The Challenge

Dario from Coding Pioneers approached me with a project on one of Germany's hidden champions: Reinhold Keller. They do world-class interior and construction for corporations like Hilton, Dunkin Donuts, and John Reed. Despite an extremely tight budget I had to come up with some nifty deliverables for the engineers from Coding Pioneers and the in-house design department of Reinhold Keller could benefit from while developing an iteration of their landing pages and recruitment platform.

Content Analysis

I asked for a list of all URLs to analyze the content. Based on those URLs I dissected the website in template types and modules like content scrollers, downloads, footer, and such. Those insights were transformed into a good old sitemap. The two takeaways from that analysis were many dead-end user paths and the number of modules. Those problems lead to high bounce rates and a significant complexity in the code base. In a simpler language: users leave the page and it's expensive to maintain.

Map with Benefits

Based on the new insights from the content analysis I came up with a sitemap that improved the lives of different individuals (and objects):

  1. Modules were now recyclable and used on different templates. That's a simplification of an engineer's life.
  2. Crosslinking between sections and follow-up content at the end of pages invites B2B users and job seekers to spend more time on the page. This is a benefit for the marketing person, HR, and users.
  3. PDF downloads and such were replaced with digital-only content. Truly a relief for trees and printers. And a benefit for mobile users.