Renewable Energy Group (REG) is a global producer and supplier of renewable fuels like biodiesel and renewable diesel, renewable chemicals and other products. For more than 20 years, REG has pushed clean fuels forward from niche products to economically viable fuel alternatives. From REG-9000 Biodiesel and renewable diesel to REG Ultra Clean™ Diesel and more — REG offers cleaner fuels that helps  customers support both the environment and their business. (Description credit: REG Website)

REG tasked the digital team at Two Rivers Marketing (2RM) to reorganize and redesign their corporate website. The updated website needed to reflect the brand and position of REG as a publicly-traded company and the advanced biofuels leader. It also needed to be audience-centric, optimized for today’s digital environment, and designed to generate and capture leads. I partnered with Two Rivers Marketing to lead the UX strategy and implementation portion of the redesign project.

Here is the original corporate website design:

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When I started collaborating on this project, research and discovery work was already available in the form of stakeholder and customer surveys results, a competitive analysis, a content inventory, and existing site analytics. My role started by understanding this research and synthesizing it for use in a client roadmap workshop. I planned the workshop format, agenda, and schedule and then facilitated the workshop with REG and 2RM stakeholders. During the workshop, we discussed user research results and then filled out a Product Vision Board, which covers target groups, user needs, business goals, and the content, features, and infrastructure needed to support those items.

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Following the Vision Board activity, we determined overall product themes by grouping the needs/goals/content/features and then prioritizing them using a Bang vs. Buck chart. Finally, we planned out current and future releases and added KPIs for each release. Here is the final roadmap design, which provided clarity to all stakeholders around the project scope and what problems and needs we were solving.

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Following the roadmap workshop and delivery, I began working on the sitemap/content architecture for the website. I used a tool called Slickplan to organize not only the pages needed on the new site, but also what high-level content could be needed on those pages and what design/development components could be useful to support that content. By defining the content structures ahead of time, I was able to define approximately what types of modules would be needed on the final site. This method of organization allows for flexible page designs and page creation within the final CMS and doesn't limit pages to only a certain template. The output of the sitemap/content map is interactive, and following agreement on the architecture, the content was housed in the same tool and matched up with page sections to provide a clear layout and plan for the CMS admins.

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Once the sitemap was approved, I began working on wireframes for the new site in a prototyping tool called Axure. The sitemap gave me a head-start on the early design concepts as I had already identified the content supporting structures needed. Using those as a guide, I created enough page wireframes to accommodate each of the needed components across the site. This approach saves time and money during the design phase as it provides a comprehensive but not overdone idea of where the design is headed. It also gives the development team (in additional to the sitemap) an up-front idea of the scope of development work coming.

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The wireframes I built were interactive, meaning that client stakeholders and team members could click on links to visually see how the site is organized and how some of the functionality (like map filtering) should be handled.

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Following wireframe approval, I worked with the visual designer and development leads to review visual styling and functional requirements going into the development phase.

The updated REG  corporate website launched in early 2019 and provides a flexible structure that accommodates new content and changing needs going forward. Here are a few screenshots from the site:

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