Case study for: Website redesign
Maharashtra Essence
Redesigned a website for an industry leading trader of food flavours and essences, in India
ABOUT THE CLIENT
Maharashtra Essence and Gas Suppliers are one of the biggest traders of food flavours and colours, essences, essential oils etc., in India. With a humble beginning in the year 1969, they’ve now expanded their reach and presence in over 24 states throughout the country. They also export their products to the Middle East, Africa and some other countries.
OBJECTIVE
The client had a hand-coded website built circa 2010 and had been using it for the next 7-8 years. Understandably so, the website looked from the era gone by and was in a desperate need of a makeover to make it look trendy, inviting and appealing to the new decade it was in. Besides the aesthetics, it was also imperative to redesign the website keeping the newer lines of business introduced in their operations and the website was to reflect that change as well.
CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS
As with a few of our other clients, the Maharashtra Essence and Gas Suppliers’ website was ranking very well for some of the most sought-after keywords in their industry. As such we wanted to ensure that the website redesign did not jeopardize their current rankings.
Another set of challenge we faced was the sheer number of food flavours and essences that were listed on the old website. Due to the fact that the client is in the food flavours business, we had to restructure the layout of the list in a more logical manner – so as to provide Google the information it requires to understand the site and not harm the rankings either.
As a responsible SEO agency in Mumbai, we made sure that all the URL structure remained intact as they were on the previous website. This made sure that no SEO authority was lost and the client enjoyed the high rankings they were on the keywords in the SERP.
WEBSITE REDESIGN IN ACTION
1) COLOURS
When you look at the old website (see screenshot below), it is hard not to notice the dark theme.
The entire website was built around that and we wanted to take the site’s appeal away from the darkness that it was shrouded in. This was primarily done for 2 reasons:
1) Dark themed websites were still very nascent in their stages (circa early 2019)
2) Their acceptance as a design decision was still questionable – at least for a professional business website that wasn’t in the tech space.
Because the industry the client is in, we narrowed down the colour palette to more subdued, floral colours as it is reminiscent of flowers and fragrances – something that aligns very well with the brand the business wanted to go after. After much deliberation, here’s the final colour palette:
Also, notice the extremely generous white space on both sides of the old website (although it is dark gray, the empty space is still called as the white space). This made it look outdated and “not keeping with the times”. We switched the layout to go full-width and stretched it out to cover maximum screen space. This immediately made it look much better, giving it more room to breathe and easily accommodates the various elements that need to be displayed.
2) TYPOGRAPHY
The old website was using the typeface Verdana throughout the site – for the headings and body text. While the font was rather simple, keeping up with the site that it previously was; we wanted to change it so as to inject a typographical freshness into the site’s design.
For the body text, we decided to keep it as simple as possible – so we stuck with Segoe UI, a sans-serif typeface that you will see it being used exhaustively on Microsoft Windows and applications, primarily due to its high readability and understandability.
However for headings, we chose Ovo – a serif typeface designed by Nicole Fally. The letterings have a hint of casualness about them and the soft treatment of the serif typeface lends a bit of femininity to the overall aesthetics of the redesigned website – to evoke that sense through its range of products – mainly gorgeous food colours and sweet-smelling fragrances and essences.
We also made use of a third “accent” typeface called Delius Swash Caps to list out the names of the various products. Although initially, we wanted to keep it much simpler and therefore use Segoe UI; we felt the website needed a much needed friendlier vibe. The eccentric comical letterings and over-the-top curves of Delius Swash Caps bring a splash of friendliness to the page and makes the brand look very approachable.
In combination with the elegance and the stately feeling that Ovo ushers – reminding of the humble beginnings of this company many decades ago; the website now sports a very clean, elegant and an amiable character that’s unique to it.
3) IMAGES
What good is a website with no good images?! When we understood what the client was, and the industry they work in; we knew we had to source great quality images to prim up the redesigned website. While the older website did have a few photos on the pages as you can see below, they were nowhere as good in quality or appeal:
We redesigned the structure of the website keeping in mind that photos are going to do a lot of talking. After all, the client is serving the food and hospitality industry and mediocre photographs just won’t do justice. The structure of the pages were designed to keep a healthy number of photos on the forefront. And they indeed look spectacular and drool worthy:
Google Analytics: At WP Adventure, we believe that you can only do good marketing if you’ve collected good data. And the best free tool that does this is Google Analytics. We truly believe that it is the one thing that should always be there on your website in order to collect data that then drives smart business decisions in the future. Since the old website did not have any tracking system in place and no analytics installed, we knew we had to step in and do the needful. Google Analytics now collects all the relevant data streaming into it for the business owners to glean useful information which they can then put to use for marketing purposes.
We absolutely loved working with Maharashtra Essence and Gas Suppliers.
