Background
We began our long-standing partnership with Snellman when the company was looking for an agency to renew its website. Over the years, Genero’s services have come to include digital marketing in various forms, long-term search engine optimization as well as website development, including a second website renewal in 2017. We’re proud of the results we have achieved, as Snellman’s turnover has grown year after year and the organic traffic to their website has increased more than tenfold since the beginning of our partnership.
In 2021, Snellman once again planned to renew their website. Despite the current site’s performance and high search engine visibility with millions of annual visitors, Snellman wanted to stay ahead as a pioneer among food recipe sites. Additionally, they were also about to refresh their brand soon.
Goals
The primary motivation for renewing the site was a change in how people access and use content on the web. Whereas a few years earlier the majority of visitors to snellman.fi still viewed the site on a computer screen, now most visits came from mobile devices. Therefore, a truly modern recipe site should not just be mobile-friendly but rather designed from the ground up for the visitor looking at the recipe on their cell phone.
Snellman’s vision for the new site included a completely new kind of recipe experience that would combine full-screen video with excellent mobile usability, creating an immersive presentation of cooking instructions and the delectability of the dish. This innovative format would enable users to effortlessly follow video instructions at their own pace, eliminating the need for scrolling, pausing the video, or navigating back and forth between instruction and ingredient sections.
While the envisioned new recipe experience was the main priority, there were also other considerations: a visual update according to the new brand image, as well as an integration with the PLM (product lifecycle management) system that Snellman was already using. This was deemed necessary in order to more easily manage the ever-changing multitude of products and recipes on the website.
Overall, there were many aspects to consider: a completely novel recipe experience, new functionalities, the PLM integration, changes in the site structure, etc. Moreover, everything would need to be accomplished without hurting the site’s great search engine visibility.
What we did
During workshops with the client, we began the project planning phase by identifying the requirements for the new website and outlining other implementation considerations. After that, we moved on to designing the layout, keeping in close contact with the client throughout the process.
Once the visual appearance was mostly finalized and approved, the actual development work began. Even though we anticipated this to be the most time-consuming part of the project, unforeseen challenges came up along the way. Particularly, the PLM integration proved to be lot more laborious than we had initially estimated. Nevertheless, we were fortunate in that Snellman had from the get-go been flexible with the project’s schedule. Instead of rushing toward a strict launch deadline, they preferred to take the time necessary to ensure that the quality would be top-notch.
With the bulk of the work taking place in 2022, by the start of 2023, the project was nearing completion. Before the official launch, the site was beta-tested by Snellman’s employees and newsletter subscribers.
The test users found the site to be smooth and user-friendly while appreciating the visually appealing design and intuitive navigation. The clear presentation of recipes received praise and the step-by-step video instructions were deemed highly useful.
Overall, the feedback was extremely positive. As no major issues arose during the testing phase, already within a week we were able to proceed with the actual launch of the new site.
Website projects are prone to snowball and expand as they progress. Genero showed great flexiblility in incorporating new ideas that we came up along the way. We are happy to now have a site that is better and more functional than we could initially even imagine. We believe that it will stand the test of time and provide a basis for new ideas that are yet to be implemented. And most importantly, we can now provide consumers with more comprehensive information about our products, while the new recipe page format makes it easy for everyone to prepare delicious dishes at home.
Tommi Fors, Marketing and Communications Director at Snellmanin Lihanjalostus Oy
