Project Summary
Bakels Group are a global manufacturing business specialising in baking ingredients.
They operate across the globe and as such, they have a lot of websites to manage. These websites are localised for each country, and many require multilingual functionality.
Bakels approached us to migrate their 25 websites to WordPress, as their custom-built CMS was outdated and no longer fit for purpose.
It was clear that this was the perfect project for implementing WordPress Multisite. Creating a network of linked global sites to simplify the management of their large website portfolio.
Deliverables
- Discovery & Strategy Workshops
- High Fidelity UX Wireframes
- Page Layouts Designed
- Mobile & Desktop Viewports
- Bespoke WordPress Theme
- WordPress Development
- WordPress Multisite
- Browser & Device Testing
- Analytics & Goal Tracking
- WordPress Training
- Ongoing Support & Maintenance
- WordPress Managed Hosting
The Challenge
Bakels Group are a global business specialising in baking ingredients. They have 24 local websites across their countries of operation, and their group site.
Bakels approached Impact Media, as their custom built CMS was outdated and no longer fit for purpose. It was difficult to update, and gave limited control to adapt and manage content. They wanted to migrate all 25 sites over to WordPress, due to its ease of use and scalability and needed an agency with proven expertise in WordPress web development.
Solution
With their specification and requirements gathered, it was clear that this was the perfect project for implementing WordPress Multisite, allowing the creation of a network of linked global sites. This means that all of the sites share a single installation, making management and maintenance a more streamlined process.
Workshops, Wireframing And Visual Design
Our Discovery and Strategy workshops interrogate the brief, solidify objectives, and review audits and research carried out before the workshops.
These 2 workshops included Bakels and their key stakeholders.
Look and feel, technical requirements and integrations, and SEO benchmarking are amongst the other areas that we delve into during these sessions.
From here we moved on to wireframing and visual design, the deliverables of which included:
- High fidelity wireframing and prototyping of desktop and mobile views
- Design style guide and system
- UI design visuals for desktop and mobile
- Open Graph image template
The workshop included:
- Positives and negatives of the existing website
- Review of stakeholder interviews & user research
- Persona creation for core user groups
- Competitor review/analysis
- Look and feel discussion & mood board
- Initial sitemap and architecture
- Tools, integrations and functionality required
- Backend discussion
- Products discovery
- USPs & CTAs discussion
- Analytics review
- SEO review and migration discussion
- User journey planning
- Content audit review
- Content planning and outline
- Speed & performance report
Development Of A Bespoke Theme
We develop a custom theme for every project. Ensuring a unique website and a more streamlined, lightweight solution.
We created the parent theme for the global site and a child theme for the country sites.
Simplicity Of Use
The first phase of this project was to create their group website, which was to be the hub for their local sites within the multisite environment.
Their Group website acts as a top-level window to their offering, highlighting their products, services, job vacancies, news stories and worldwide locations.
We created a highly customised but user-friendly backend, to provide technical solutions to their unique requirements.
First and foremost was to address the pain points they had experienced with their previous CMS, so content management and simple page creation were a priority.
We gave them a page builder that allowed the Bakels team to easily create attractive new pages, with all the elements needed at their fingertips.
For ultimate ease of use, we created a series of training videos for Bakels employees, and placed them in the backend, so they would have access to them anytime they needed.
Global Location & Suppliers Map
The Google Maps API was used to create the Bakels Worldwide page, creating an attractive and interactive index of their businesses and distributors across the globe, with links to their local sites.
These sites share many features with the group site, but also have an array of additional custom functionality, including:
24 Country Specific Sites
Next was to create the suite of local sites, each tailored to the country of business, including expertly translated local languages. In some instances multiple languages were required, so we made use of WPML, which allows users to switch.
These sites share many features with the group site, but also have an array of additional custom functionality, including:
Frontend
- Account area where users can register and save their favourite products and recipes.
- A Pinterest style insights page full of useful articles.
- A stockists locator.
- Dynamic search.
- Recipes area with advanced filters pulling in ingredients and important information on allergens, suitability for specialist diets and nutritional numbers.
Backend
- Spotlight Campaigns - allowing Bakels to create campaign landing pages.
- Dynamic PDF Creation on the fly.
- Advanced Product and Recipe Management.
- A library of training videos.
Integrations & Plugins
- Google Maps API to create the global locations and stockist maps.
- WPML to handle country sites which required multilingual functionality.
- Campaign Monitor for email marketing.
- Gravity Forms for form data management and personalisation.
Hosting, Support, Maintenance & Security
We also support and maintain the website. This includes:
- A dedicated server
- CDN and caching solutions
- Offsite secure backups
- Separate staging environment for testing
- Cloudflare's cloud based WAF
- WordPress and plugin updates tested before pushing to live environment
- Ongoing maintenance and support
- Training videos in dashboard
Results
Since launch the sites have been a great success, giving Bakels a highly customised solution, whilst providing them with ease of use and control over their content.
The Multisite solution means that any code pushes or updates only need to be carried out once for all sites, saving the client time and money.
