Writing, Project Management, & Photography
Construction Website Overhaul
Client: Oelrich Construction
My Role: Marketing Manager
Website Vendor: BUDA Group
Headshot Photos: Johnston Photography
IT Consultant: Ralph Kubiseck
Staff Field Portraits: Myself
The scope-of-work for this build encompassed hundreds of photos and 110+ pages of content. I spearheaded the transformation from a static website design to a modern, responsive site.
My Role
As marketing manager, I was in charge of leading this website rebuild from start to finish. I collaborated with executive leadership and three outside vendors. The scope of work was considerable, encompassing 13 years of project history at Oelrich Construction .
My responsibilities for this initiative included: conducting a competitive website analysis, managing our website development contract with BUDA Group, writing stakeholder-targeted copy, compiling extensive project portfolio photos and data, coordinating headshot photography with Johnston Photography, taking action shots of all staff, coordinating with our IT consultant to transfer our website domain hosting, proofreading/testing the website, and promoting the launch of the new website to stakeholders.
After the launch, I continued to be responsible for updating and maintaining the site using the WordPress CMS system and for monitoring our performance using Google Analytics. We successfully transitioned from an old static design to a contemporary, responsive website.
The Challenge
Oelrich Construction’s website did not reflect its stature in the A/E/C industry and its strong reputation. The previous website was built on an old version of Joomla that was non-responsive and didn’t adapt to different screen sizes.
When viewing the website on a mobile device, web content was awkwardly displayed and difficult to navigate. Even on a standard monitor, the website design was sub-optimal… it wasted screen real estate by only displaying content on the middle of the screen and leaving large swathes of white space. It was particularly important to pursue a website refresh since Oelrich was focused on expanding its presence in a new territory.
During my first year as Marketing Manager at Oelrich Construction, I persuaded company leadership to add to the strategic plan by investing in a complete website overhaul. I helped Oelrich Construction rebuild its online presence to better reflect its growth and expertise.
The Outcomes
The Oelrich Construction project took about 5 months of development, testing, and roll-out. The website redevelopment project was completed successfully on time and on budget.
The new responsive website design communicated Oelrich Construction’s superb reputation by using compelling copy, high-impact project photography, clean modern typography, and a number of custom elements like “before and after” sliders, modern headshots, staff action photos, special effects photo filters, and more.
Post-launch, we saw a 85% growth in overall website traffic and a 16% surge in mobile use for the first 12 month period after the new website went live. Session duration increased substantially, while bounce rate dropped significantly. Google Analytics data continued to show sustained growth in subsequent reporting periods. We received positive feedback from all of our stakeholder groups.
By better displaying Oelrich Construction’s experience and qualifications digitally, we were able to more successfully engage clients, trade subcontractors, architect/engineering partners, and new hires. The campaign complemented Oelrich’s business development priorities and helped us successfully break into a new geographic territory.
The mobile-responsive website design enhanced Oelrich’s online reputation, drove brand differentiation, and significantly improved stakeholder experience. The new website launched in 2017; I continued to maintain the site until 2020.
Award-Winning Design
The Oelrich Construction website redesign project won a 2017 Silver W3 Award from the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts (AIVA). The new website was evaluated based on its creativity, usability, navigation, functionality, visual design, and ease of use.
The Process
I began by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of our website and comparing it to leading industry peers. I led the website vendor selection process and solicitated competitive quotes. We hired local website developers Melanie Ling and Javier Espinosa from BUDA Group. We chose a mobile-optimized WordPress template design to keep costs affordable and to make it easy to maintain the website in-house in the future.
Our primary stakeholders were clients, trade subcontractors, architect/engineering partners, current staff members, and possible new hires. The new website would have to appeal to each of these audiences. I prepared a site content tree to express a proposed site organizational structure. I wrote tailored narrative copy that would satisfy the needs/wants of our primary website users. I met regularly with company leadership to incorporate feedback and keep the project on track.
Our project portfolio data was fragmented at the time, so I compiled a detailed “master spreadsheet” of all past projects with descriptions, square footage, budget numbers, completion dates, design partners, and more. (This tool that would also be used to streamline our RFQ process.)
Conveying Oelrich Construction’s expertise in specialty market segments was crucial. We highlighted the following sectors: Government, Education, Commercial, Parks & Recreation, Healthcare & Research, and Civil & Infrastructure. BUDA Group embedded a filterable WordPress gallery plug-in to organize projects.
The professional headshots of company staff members looked dated and out of fashion. I contracted with Johnston Photography to retake headshot photos of all 25+ staff members and move away from a yellow-brown background to a clean, neutral grey background.
A “suit and tie” professional headshot is standard practice, but we decided to go the extra mile. We wanted to convey that our team members were hands-on professionals, so I took “action photos” of all staff members in their role in either the office or in the field. Using a Nikon DSLR, I took 25+ individual portraits of all team members in their “natural environment” reviewing construction plans or coordinating concrete subcontractors. These in-house action photos uniquely complemented the headshots Johnston Photography took and were featured on each staff member’s bio page. (The “action photos” taken for the website project were utilized in other marketing applications to communicate our firm’s expertise.)
Oelrich Construction completed a number of iconic city projects such as the 13th Street Helyx Bridge, Depot Park, and Bo Diddley Plaza. BUDA Group applied a special illustrative “watercolor” effect to photos of these sites to convey the hand craftmanship that went into constructing these landmark projects. We also incorporated a “before” and “after” slider to show some of the most striking project transformations we completed.
I coordinated with clients to obtain testimonials of our performance to display on our website. I also compiled an extensive list of all the awards our company won over the years, to communicate Oelrich Construction’s excellent reputation in the A/E/C industry.
Through careful planning and close collaboration, the new mobile-friendly website met all critical project milestones and was launched on-time and on-budget.
