IFF - Content Strategy
Promoting a New Market Position
The Challenge
IFF, a $34 billion global provider of flavors and fragrances, needed to redesign its corporate website to reflect a new market position and brand story.
My Role
I worked on a 46-person team that included designers, developers, SEO specialists, technical architects, project managers and sales directors across 4 global offices. During an 11-month engagement period, I was responsible for:
Conducting background research,
Creating the site architecture, and
Mapping content to design modules.
Close collaboration with:
Account Director: Jessica Dalziel
Project Managers: Ruth Hardy and Rupak Nandi
Content Strategists: Simon Barton, Clara Murray, and Lucy Hartley
Visual Designers: Blaine Lindsay and Daria Kalyta
Developers: Aniruddhsinh Solanki, Shalin Shukla, and Nikhil Vadhawana
SEO & Data Analysts: Carter Punturi and Stephen Roda
My Approach
I worked with content strategists Simon Barton, Clara Murray, and Lucy Hartley to conduct 4 stakeholder workshops, analyze 23 stakeholder survey responses, and review 5 peer websites. We used this background research to:
Define personas that represented key website audiences and digital user groups,
Establish a content framework to guide a gap analysis, and
Outline a set of principles to manage the migration of individual websites to one unified platform.
Following the research and discovery phase of the project, I worked with visual designer Daria Kalyta to create 68 page layouts in line with the approved design modules, content, and sitemap. These layouts were used to guide the development of the new website.
Stakeholder Surveys
To understand stakeholder preferences and goals, we created a 40-question survey, compiled the answers, and summarized 23 responses from employees across all global business units.
Content Audit
To audit 35 subsidiary websites, we created a framework to analyze narrative content against 5 messaging themes established during the stakeholder sessions.
Objectives & KPIs
To create measurement guidelines for the finished website, I developed a framework to connect IFF’s business goals to key performance indicators. These were applied to each page of the site.
The Solution
The background research helped us understand what content existed, what needed to be revised, and what was missing from the perspective of key website audiences. It also helped us create a set of objectives that were used to validate and refine the preliminary sitemap.
The new sitemap aligned with IFF’s business goals and outlined a structure that was used to guide the development of design modules for the full corporate website.
The new website reflected IFF’s position as an industry leader and served to unify all recent acquisitions on a single platform. Updated designs and content also promoted the company’s new brand messaging in time for an important merger announcement.
Final product: IFF Corporate Website
Lessons Learned
This project included very tight deadlines that required a coordinated effort across four offices and time zones.
Through this collaboration, I worked on the full project lifecycle - from research and discovery to content strategy to design and development. This helped me better understand my own role in each phase of the project.
Together with the project’s designer, I identified several areas for improvement in the way we collect content and translate it into a finished product. I also created a measurement framework to analyze the site’s performance as it evolves with changing business objectives.