IFF - Blueprint
Outlining a Digital Solution
The Challenge
IFF, a $34 billion leader in the international flavors and fragrances industry, needed to redesign its corporate website following several acquisitions.
The blueprint was an opportunity to:
Analyze IFF’s existing digital structure,
Research all entities and recent acquisitions under the IFF umbrella, and
Outline a solution to restructure the corporate website in a way that allowed for future growth.
My Role
I was part of a 5-person team that included:
Account Director: Jessica Dalziel
Visual Designer: Blaine Lindsay
Technical Architect: David Corchado
Project Manager: Matt Eidschun
Working closely with Jessica Dalziel, I was responsible for conducting the research, analyzing the results, and outlining a solution in a final 38-page document.
My Approach
A content-focused approach to the discovery process consisted of the following research exercises, completed over 5 months:
Content audit of 236 websites,
Peer audit of 4 competitor websites,
Interviews with 2 primary stakeholders, and
Review of Google Analytics data.
Data Analysis
After organizing 236 sitemaps side by side, I developed a method to analyze the content across each of these entities.
Content Review
To audit the content, I created a gap analysis to highlight the key information, features, and functionality across all sites.
Final Document
The completed blueprint included a summary of all research and an outline of the proposed technical solution for a new website.
The Solution
Through my research, I identified two key business themes that were used to outline the proposed solution:
Organization and Structure: a new site architecture would be needed to organize content from all subsidiary entities, address audience needs, and reflect the company’s new operating model in a consistent, scalable way.
Branding and Company Narrative: the company would need to tell a new story from the perspective of a unified business, with a shared mission, vision, and values.
Lessons Learned
The main challenge of this project was to gather and organize all subsidiary website information. This data included 236 company names and URLs, obtained from different stakeholders and sources. The second challenge was to create a research methodology to analyze content across each of these entities.
Through this research, I learned how to connect my analysis to a technical solution that guided the planning, scoping, and estimation efforts for additional content strategy and development work.