WEST SYSTEM

Website Build for the Leader in Marine Epoxy

A recognized leader in formulating and producing marine epoxies in the United States (U.S.) and the European Union (E.U.). With the perfect blend of quality and chemistry, their products are internationally stocked and a gold standard in their industry.

A Website Build To Accelerate Growth

After years of partnering with Entropy Resins, another subsidiary of Gougeon Brothers, WEST SYSTEM asked us to helm their new website build. The main goal of this project was to provide users with details on products, safety, and anything else epoxy while providing a map of where to navigate to make their purchase.

To properly assess what needed to change, we performed a full UX investigation into their users’ needs and goals. While users could find information in most cases, it was a timely and difficult task with the layout of the information. Thus, we identified the key areas to focus our improvement efforts towards, culminating in resource-rich product pages and an easy-to-use selection guide supported by a clean, branded experience.

WEST SYSTEM iPad Air mockup of three pages on the website.

Increase in Page Views
Increase in Page Views
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A Leader in Marine Epoxy

WEST SYSTEM hosts valuable product and safety information on their site. It promotes its products with the primary goal of identifying what product users need and pushing them to find the location nearest to them to make their purchase.

With this key goal in mind, we shaped the website around intuitive browsing, presenting the prior dense information blocks in a new visual format that invites users to explore and easily access what they need.

Icon for user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) research; a computer with a head and a brain with thoughts coming in.

UX Research

Working with their previous website, it was clear that the dense text areas made it difficult to browse their wealth of information. We performed a variety of research methods to get both a worm’s and a bird’s eye view of how users interacted with the website.

Using heat mapping, recordings, a deep dive into Analytics, and curated user testing, we identified the key areas vital to the user journey and aspects causing users to hit a wall in finding the needed information.

Intersite Search

Gougeon Brothers has a blog entity apart from WEST SYSTEM called Epoxyworks. This resource is for everything epoxy that they have been publishing since the 1990s. It hosts a plethora of how-tos, techniques, safety information, and beyond that is incredibly relevant to WEST SYSTEM users.

With this, we integrated the search on WEST SYSTEM also to access the articles hosted on Epoxyworks, creating a comprehensive knowledge base.

Selection Guide

An integral part of the product selection process is mixing and matching the epoxy with WEST SYSTEMS’ various hardeners, fillers, and additives that modify the epoxy to work for different use cases. During our UX Research, we identified major hang-ups in the PDF used to guide this mix-and-match system.

So, we created an interactive, stepped selection system that allows users to curate the perfect product mix, complete with accessories, to simplify what is typically a stressful part of the purchase process. Once all products are identified, users can sign up to receive an email with a list of the items to take to the store.

Robust Product Pages

Users frequently visited product pages to find information related to products, such as specific how-tos or technical specs. We bolstered these pages with a top navigation menu to allow access to the page information. This allowed us to dedicate space to carving out various visual rows and allowing users to find what they needed quickly without reducing its accessibility.

Where To Buy

With a vast international audience on nearly every continent (alas, no sales in Antarctica yet), users must be able to find where they can find the product in their area. So, we included an interactive map with the ability to input a ZIP code to zero in on local stores.

Clicking on the tooltip will open an interface with that store’s information, including address, phone number, and website link. This allows users to find where to order the products quickly and easily.

Setting Sail

With this voyage, the wind has yet to leave our sails as we continue with maintenance to keep building up the website. We are working to create a dedicated European website to serve users better worldwide. Our collaboration in creating a space and resource for epoxy professionals and enthusiasts alike continues to be an exciting journey as we forge more and more with Gougeon Brothers.