Wunder.io has experienced a redesign
Today, we live in a more digital world than ever before, and nearly all businesses have digital dimensions. How the company presents itself in the digital world increasingly determines the business's success. In our case, the website is not only a source of information but also a showroom of the solutions we build. In this article, we will share why we redesigned our site, what innovations we have built, and how you will see our site develop in the near future.
Why the redesign?
Digital development has taken major leaps in the last five years - and that’s nearly how old our previous site was. On top of the rapidly growing technical debt, the design and content no longer matched with our updated vision, mission, and brand guidelines and our pretty impressive offering appeared way smaller than it actually is. All this led to declining traffic and shorter session lengths, which definitely did not benefit us. Our digital presence did not reflect our abilities, making it a potential roadblock instead of a red carpet for future clients.
On the marketing side, our website wasn't effectively showcasing our capabilities and expertise in digital development, which is essential in today's competitive landscape. Plus, with technology evolving rapidly, it was high time for our website to receive some much-needed updates. To top it off, our content management system (CMS) and integrations were causing issues affecting both the user experience of site visitors and content creators.
In essence, the decision to redesign our website was driven by our desire to better connect with our audience, showcase our strengths, and stay ahead in the ever-changing digital landscape. Our older site was built by an external partner and with WordPress. Today, we do deliver and develop WordPress sites ourselves as well, but we chose redesign with next-drupal-starterkit innovated by our superstar developers.
How did we do that?
After considering our options, we decided to do the redesign in-house. That way, we could address our sales and marketing needs, showcase our expertise in digital development and design, and grow internal knowledge of next-drupal-starterkit template. Not only would it enable us to showcase our expertise, but it would bring the marketing team closer to all the development work Wunder does.
During the process, we learned a lot about the capabilities of the next-drupal-starterkit template, how to optimally solve special design needs, and how to build complex integrations and dream-come-true CMS. We have built solutions with the next-drupal-starterkit before for our clients, but this was the biggest project built with it so far.
The timeline for this project was very ambitious, but we were still able to launch pretty much when originally planned. One of the major goals was learning, and one of our lessons was that the schedule can not be extremely tight to enable learning without pressure.
The development team was very committed, and the Wunder Spirit was present throughout the entire project. One significant factor in the success was agreeing in the very state that the Marketing team would not steer the project but would be treated as any other external client. This included dedicated project management, account management, and following the standard project steps. The importance of clarity on roles and responsibilities can not be overemphasized, and with internal projects, even more so.
Mind the differences
If you take a closer look at our redesigned site, you will notice that the design is not the only thing that has changed. On top of lighter and more modern visual looks, the site has experienced some structural changes as well. For example, our valuable client stories are now under the Success stories title (former “Work”), the open positions can be found under the Join us section (former “Careers”), and the articles, news, events, recording, and Wunderpedia content is now under one umbrella called Insights. Yet, the greatest upgrade is our brand-new Services section, where you can easily see and filter the services Wunder offers its clients. Also, the Search works way better than it did earlier and is something that we will continue to develop in the very near future.
What we did not change is how we operate with our photos and pictures. We are still using only photos that portray our people. Stock photos lower sites' SEO scores, but, more importantly, in our eyes, our people are so awesome that they simply deserve to be seen. We want to be genuine and showcase our diversity as it is. Yet, since not everyone wishes their photos to be on the internet, we decided not to have a People section showcasing all our employees with their faces. The world has changed in the past five years, and for us, the option of privacy is as essential as being genuine.
What's next?
The redesigned site experienced a soft launch at the end of February and has been in continuous development mode since then. We continue working and adding new features and functionalities as we speak. So don't be surprised when visiting our site after a week you might spot something new.
Likewise, we continue to work on content and accessibility improvements to provide the most delightful experience to site users. So stay tuned and bookmark our site so you don't miss a thing.
Do you have feedback or questions about our site?
We would be very happy to hear it, so send us a message with the form below (contact form EN) and tell us how our new site looks to you!