Rebuilding Hormel Health Labs Website

Transforming the online presence of a specialty food company with a major consolidation and redesign.

Client

Capabilities

Business Strategy, eCommerce, Content Creation, Design & Branding Systems, Digital Marketing, SEO / SEM / AIO

Hormel Health Labs (HormelHealthLabs.com) is a leader in providing high-quality, tasty foods for those with special nutritional needs. HHL offers these products in high volume to foodservice, healthcare professionals and healthcare institutions. They also offer them directly to consumers for in-home and office use via HomeCareNutrition.com.

The Challenge

The main issue? Health Labs was maintaining two websites—HomeCareNutrition.com (HCN) and HormelHealthLabs.com (HHL). They both contained identical product information and published very similar content. Two websites creates double the work—two brands to manage, two places to update product information and two content platforms to feed. Further, the sites were built on the Magento platform, which required coding to make even minor content updates.

With two separate, outdated websites—one for direct-to-consumer sales and one for content—Hormel Health Labs’ brand was fragmented and expressionless. After collaborating on a new brand identity model and a subsequent logo redesign, we jumped in.

The new brands landing page, a brand detail page, and the products landing page

Project Goals

Armed with detailed analytics, SEO/SEM research, and direct customer input, we joined forces with the Hormel Health Labs (HHL) team to establish the high-level goals that would guide a full-scale reinvention of their digital experience.

01
Maximize Purchase Opportunities
- Increase efficiency with the paths to purchase and provide mechanisms for ongoing engagement with institutional customers and home care users
- Provide product information that’s relevant to purchasing decisions
02
Reinforce Health Labs as a Nutrition Leader
- Become a content platform, and drive consumer / institutional traffic to the proper digital properties
- Audiences can validate HHL as a leader in tasty nutrition solutions for those with eating difficulties via articles, stories, and product information
03
Unify the Home Care Nutrition (HCN) and HHL Brands
- Create a single source website that provides clear paths for customers and consumers
- Provide audiences with thoughtful, seamless experience for purchasing & information access
- Implement SEO-driven, relevant content and present it thoughtfully

Execution

Ecommerce-focused Architecture

Using a platform that was easy to manage and one that enabled the client to make content updates was critical, which made a transition to WordPress a no-brainer. Coupled with WooCommerce as the ecommerce engine, we had a strong framework for HHL’s most important digital tool.

Our design included new templates that prioritized a seamless user experience, which allowed our audiences to learn about, and purchase products with minimal friction. Our new HHL design system was implemented to guarantee consistency across every element, and allowed engagement across all screen sizes—from mobile to desktop.

A House of Brands

Overall, there were 12 individual brands in the HHL specialty foods portfolio—each with its own unique logo and line of products. To effectively tell the story of each brand, we developed in-depth landing pages that allowed us to shape the narrative for each one’s history, product lineup and specific nutrition category.

Design Updates

One of the most critical parts of this project was getting the new look and feel of the site locked in. It needed to be approachable and professional, conveying the expertise of the client without feeling to cold and institutional. To that end our team worked to create a fresh design system that utilized some new elements and fonts that conveyed a more editorial style which, when paired with more corporate website tropes, helped get both ideas across visually. We also created a more modern color scheme and a set of updated secondary brand elements like icons and sub-brand specific illustrations to help users feel more comfortable on the site. With all of that worked out we called our frequent collaborators at Adjacent to help us with the development of the site and the new HormelHeathLabs.com was live.

Iconography developed for the site along with screenshots of various pages and an example of new product creative the Attention Span team helped art direct.

The Results

The Health Labs team was thrilled with the new content-hub and even more impressed with the unlimited eCommerce capabilities and the ability to measure campaigns, traffic and results.

41%
Increase in total eCommerce revenue (including estimated 3P sales)
24%
Increase in quarterly website users
68%
Increase in page one keywords