Balchem Website Rebuild and Content Migration
A New Global Hub For Food & Nutrition Science.
Balchem began in 1967 with a group of entrepreneurs, investors, and Dr. Leslie Balassa. Since then, they have grown to over 1,400 employees and have offices in countries all over the world. Their business is incredibly diverse, but in a nutshell, focuses primarily on products for human, plant, and animal nutrition. Their offerings can range from food ingredients and flavorings to sterilization products used in the medical industry.
Putting together a website for a company like this required meetings with stakeholders from Belgium to Bali and a whole lot of learning on our part. We were tasked with merging 28 vastly different sites into one. After countless hours of content strategy and collaboration, we were able to deliver a site that symbiotically brought together the three main branches of their company. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with and be a part of the growth of such a fascinating and innovative global organization.
What We Did
Industry
Manufacturing
Food and Beverage
B2B Services
Colors & Typography
Before we took on this project, Balchem had recently been rebranded. We chose to use the updated color palette with the addition of some monochromatic accents to complement the main colors.
As for type, we used SF Pro and Roboto as clean, legible, sans-serif fonts to help clearly convey all the complex information throughout the site.
Brand Colors
Typography
Big Goals: Unifying A Global Company
Balchem is a fascinating global organization that specializes in human, plant, and animal nutrition. They also leverage nutrient choline throughout all of their segments including a few industrial applications. In order to better direct the user flow, we needed to construct distinct content verticals for each branch.
28 Websites
Balchem had made quite a few strategic acquisitions in years prior and in total had amassed 28 individual websites that needed their content migrated to the new platform. This included global TLDs, 4 different CMS platforms and other connected systems that needed to be consolidated.
Migrating Content
A large part of the process was pruning content from the old sites, figuring out what needed to be transferred and integrating a cohesive company voice into messaging across the entire site. We achieved this by mapping out an entirely new site structure in Lucid Chart, migrating that structure into Google Docs for content collection and then finally entering content into the back end of the site.
WordPress Multisite
For the benefit of content structure, segmentation, and access, we architected the their site using the power of WordPress multisite. With custom elements to pull in global menu systems and other components, we were able to develop a site that accomplished the company’s goals on the back end while appearing seamless to the front end user.
Bold Statements And Clean Layouts
It’s clear that proper hierarchy was a necessity for the new Balchem site. While the overall goal was to unify the company under one roof, we still needed to keep each segment clear and organized due to their dramatically different customer bases.
Our choice for a multi-tiered mega menu was driven by the need to quickly navigate deep into the site. This feature, as well as clear in-page nav cards, were the fundamental elements of the content funnels guiding users to connect with Balchem about their needs.
Mobile Experience
Bold contrasting colors were a visual choice to keep the site content engaging, especially as it applies to mobile. We’re always cognizant about color contrast as it is crucially important for web accessibility reasons.
Traffic assessments from Google Analytics helped us make key decisions about the placement of content and buttons, important landing pages and locating drop off points.
Contact Matchbox Design Group Today!
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