Homepage Redesign & Optimization
Cole‑Parmer’s homepage had not been updated in nearly ten years. As one of the highest‑traffic pages on the site, it created an outdated first impression and failed to support modern usability expectations, competitive benchmarks, or the company’s science‑backed value proposition. I led the end‑to‑end redesign from UX strategy and research through design direction, CMS implementation, AI integration, and final QA delivering a modern, scalable homepage that improved engagement and revenue.
- +25% revenue increase post‑launch
- Higher scroll depth and deeper content engagement
- ~10 years of design debt eliminated
- Modern usability benchmarks achieved
- UX Strategy & Design Lead
- Directed research, UX strategy, design, CMS template development, AI widget integration, and merchandising configuration
- Partnered with IT, junior designers, and Bloomreach platform teams
Cross‑functional orchestration
I led a collaborative effort across IT, design, marketing, and Bloomreach platform teams. My leadership focused on:
- Establishing a clear UX vision
- Guiding junior designers with structured direction and rationale
- Aligning engineering on template requirements
- Ensuring marketing had flexible, scalable content zone
- Maintaining stability during the transition with zero revenue disruption
Balancing personalization with constraints
Budget limitations prevented full personalization, but I identified a strategic compromise:
- Implemented recently viewed items as lightweight personalization
- Balanced user needs with business priorities (new products, promotions, campaigns)
- Created a hierarchy that communicated value proposition while enabling easy marketing updates
This “personal without full personalization” approach I conceived delivered meaningful user value within constraints.
What we were working within
- Design required to remain within a fixed layout framework in Bloomreach CMS
- Extremely tight project timeline
- Limited development resources
- Required guiding engineering on building the new page template from scratch
- No revenue disruption allowed during the transition period
Design Process and Planning for the Future
We researched widely and iterated often to land on a design that fit what limited content we’d be devilered as well the tendencies of launches and campaigns to promote. There were multiple department’s stories to tell and we kept the balance of showing products, services, articles, search, brands, and more in our design while being open to easily add sudden new suggestions.
- Researched main competitor and non-competitor websites in B2B and B2C spaces for inspiration, even finding ideas outside homepages to add to backlog for sections such as Account and other areas
- Design concepts as guides junior designers to balanced aesthetics with usability and business needs
- Debated full‑width hero options but rejected them due to inconsistent imagery and promotional demands
- Directed engineering on template structure, content zones, and future widget scalability
- AI Integration I configured and launched AI driven recommendation widgets in key homepage zones
- Managed the homepage content calendar post-launch, coordinating with Marketing on promotions and campaign alignment
- Monitored scroll depth, click behavior, and revenue metrics via Google Analytics, Qlik, and Glassbox
What we set out to do and achieved
The redesign improved visual hierarchy and scanability to support faster decision-making, strengthened the homepage’s value proposition for B2B buyers, and established a scalable content operations model with a managed editorial calendar that continues to serve the site today.