Krylon
Krylon is the industry leader for color, innovation, and inspiration. Founded in 1947, it was the first and remains the largest supplier of aerosol paints in the world. With an outdated brochureware site, Krylon looked to Happy Cog to help refresh its presentation on the web in order to reach the appropriate audiences.
Guess who’s coming to Krylon?
The first call of duty was to find out who the audience is. What kind of people were coming to the site? What were they looking for? How were they looking for it?
At Happy Cog’s suggestion, Krylon posted an optional survey on their current website over the course of a week. Users could participate for the chance to win an iPod shuffle. The survey asked fundamental questions about reasons for visiting the site, how information could be found, and what would be useful in a new site. The benefit of explicit data was just the ammo we needed to create a solid direction for the redesign.
Products and projects
Featured projects and products, front and center
Visitors looking for product information overwhelmingly outnumbered any other user type. However, the largest request for the redesign effort was new content that showed how products can be used by real people. Building upon those results, several rounds of information architecture led us to a new site structure that was equally balanced between Product information and Project Ideas. Each major page type packed a 1-2 punch of primary product and related projects, or a primary project and related products.
To prevent the web site from being just another piece of marketing fluff, it was crucial to humanize the projects. Associating faces and personalities of real people with real projects bring the products and the site to life, and provides a stream of relevant, continually updated content that keeps users coming back for more.
Responsibilities
Information architecture, graphic design, user interface design, CSS/XHTML template development, Flash animation, Flash development, JavaScript development. Launched 5 May 2008.