Topcon Positioning Systems is known for helping customers across a wide range of industries achieve dramatic productivity gains through products that harness the power of geo-positioning technology. I was the lead content strategist for a year-long redesign that transformed the company’s outdated site into a global destination localized for multiple countries with entirely new content, interaction models and visual design.
I won’t bother showing you the old site — it was so 1999. This is the home page for the new site — with hero messaging and immersive imagery that embodies bold new brand positioning that we developed for the project.
We began the project with a few simple questions: How do we tell an authentic Topcon solutions story, and how do we support that story with the right architecture and content? To find answers, our research team took a deep dive into the mindset and motivations of customers.
In our research, we discovered key messaging themes for each audience.
A key theme that emerged from our interviews was that Topcon had an opportunity to differentiate itself by highlighting its role as an advocate for its end-clients. We developed a new messaging architecture repositioning the company as both a trusted partner and a champion for its customers’ success, and we created a content strategy to support it. From that moment on, everything in the new experience — content, navigation, imagery and visual design — would flow from this new positioning.
Working in close collaboration with Topcon stakeholders, we arrived at an information architecture that radically changed the way customers interact with the company online. Instead of driving users directly to product pages, as the existing experience had done, the new IA funneled them down a path toward a Topcon solution, a group of products shown working together to create a full workflow for a given application within each industry.
Case studies, customer testimonials, social media posts, info graphics and thought leadership pieces provided “proof-points” along the way to build credibility and keep users engaged with the story.
We used interactive graphics to explain how products on the jobsite work together as a whole, showing customers how Topcon provides comprehensive solutions that drive their productivity.
During the build phase of the redesign, Topcon faced a major content challenge. Everything on the site, from product descriptions and case studies to video tutorials and images of each product, had to be created from scratch. The content team needed an editorial process and a roadmap for getting it all done. I provided a detailed content “playbook” with voice and tone guidelines, style notes and a new editorial workflow customized for each content type, defining the roles and responsibilities for everyone involved.
I used this editorial workflow as a starting point for developing Topcon’s process.
I organized Topcon’s content into four editorial groupings and media types, each one with a different workstream. Later, I led content development workshops with their content team so that everyone understood how to write in the new brand voice.
Content templates are incredibly useful when working with subject matter experts, who aren’t professional writers. Each template explains the purpose of the page, provides tips for content creators and, most importantly, gives an example of what the content should look like.
You can see here how the content template for the home page lines up with the actual pages itself. Cool, huh?
The End Result: It’s exciting to engineer the successful transformation of a client’s digital presence. For Topcon, this was more than just a redesign. The website ushered in a new era for the company and its employees, providing them with a heightened sense of purpose and a vision for the future.