Carmex is an internationally recognized lip balm brand that has been providing products to help you look and feel your very best since 1937.
The Carmex brand has been an American staple for many years, and as the CPG brand continues to grow they needed brand manager support and tools to fix some of the website issues they were encountering.
With a variety of issues affecting their website, and of course the overall brand performance, they turned to the CPG manufacturing web design and digital marketing experts at Idea. They relied on our experienced manufacturing web design team for assistance with the following issues:
Any successful CPG brand needs the right Brand Manager support and tools, and a huge part of their toolkit is the website. A website that is difficult to manage, or update, can spell trouble for the brand. In this case, Carmex’s brand managers didn’t have the support they need to make changes to the website. Essentially any website updates, like website information, graphics, product pages, and more, were made virtually impossible because of the difficult back-end management. Without fixing their website, the Carmex team would be unable to add or feature new products, a major problem for the brand.
The limited website management was a direct result of previous website partners using bad code and other poor design choices. This led to decreasing control for the Carmex brand management team over time.
A website’s functionality is incredibly important to the user experience. If there are bugs or broken functionality on the website, then your target audience is likely to bounce.
With numerous bugs and poor functionality, the Carmex website was not providing the great user experience that one would expect from such a top-rated consumer goods brand. These issues were leading to decreased performance for the CPG brand website.
One of the worst issues was the slow website load speeds that users were experiencing, which was only getting worse with each website addition.
Their previous website was not built with a mobile-first mindset, which means their website was not optimized for mobile users’ experience. With mobile user numbers increasing each year, this is a major issue for many top CPG brands.
Mobile optimization was one of the first problems we discussed during our brand manager support meeting. Making sure that users had a uniform experience, whether on mobile, tablet, or desktop was sorely needed. Everything on the website needed to load and function properly across devices, which was not currently happening.
Due to the scope of issues plaguing the Carmex website, we presented a website redesign proposal that would address all the previously mentioned problems. Small updates or website support options would not accomplish enough to meet our client goals.
Our team of custom web design experts would rebuild the entire Carmex website and address the issues that they had shared with us, along with some additional improvements we recommended.
First, our team tackled addressing the issue of limited brand manager support opportunities due to poor website management capabilities.
Our team of top manufacturing web design experts got to work removing faulty code and functionality that were causing website errors. Now the brand managers would be able to update the website menu, add products and make other website adjustments as needed. This allowed for better brand manager support when it was needed.
One other issue with form submissions was resolved by integrating Zoho forms, which automatically categorizes submitted forms correctly. This integration greatly reduced the workload on the Carmex website brand management team.
While fixing the backend bugs our manufacturing web design team also worked to update website processes. Outdated transitions and features that were slowing the website down were removed in favor of clean modern navigation styles. Now, the website would have lightning-fast load speeds, and they wouldn’t be slowed down by future website additions. The new Carmex website load speed score was in the 90-100 range on Google Page Insights. This was a desktop load speed increase of over 40%.
Users would no longer be frustrated by pages that took extra seconds to load or failed to load at all. Now every page on the Carmex website would load quickly and correctly for their target audience.
The new website was built with a mobile-first mindset, which means the new Carmex website would load correctly on mobile, tablet, and desktop. The design would change based on screen size but there would be no sacrifice in the functionality or content. The new Carmex website’s mobile page speed increased by 148%!
By optimizing for mobile, the new website would be able to reach an even larger audience and drive even more engagement and conversion. This is a major factor missing in most manufacturing web design projects.
The new website featured a completely new web design that focused on the user experience and promoting the brand’s most valuable products. We incorporated the Carmex style into a stunning new modern CPG web design that users would love.
It features classic brand colors and highlights product offerings with a modern content carousel layout. A clear main menu is pinned at the top of the page with various topics that may interest site visitors. Upon hovering on menu options a drop-down menu appears with further subcategories. A small sub-menu rests above the pinned main menu with contact options, FAQs, international info, and language options.
The new Carmex website features modern manufacturing web design features and content that supports its image as a family-owned brand. Strategic use of the brand colors helps draw user attention to highlighted information or CTAs.
For example, on the home page, a bright red Shop Now button is pinned to the lower left corner of the screen. And on the history page, red typography for the timeline events showcase the legacy of an established brand. At the bottom of the page, a bright red button reading “Sign Me Up” pushes users to join the Carmex newsletter.
In addition, our team implemented language translators so that audiences around the world would be able to experience their new CPG web design.
With all our custom web design websites our team ensures that the client’s new website will meet best SEO practices. We research the most valuable keywords for our clients and evaluate what keywords are currently ranking. Once we’ve identified tangible SEO opportunities, our team uses these phrases both technically and organically across the website content.
We make sure that the website’s meta tags, titles, alt tags, and more align with their SEO priority keywords. Across distinct pages, our team targets specific phrases to help improve those page rankings.
While CPG brands do not focus on SEO as much as other industries, it is still an important element of a website quality score and will help drive more traffic to the website.
The final piece of brand manager support that we provided was in the form of monthly in-depth analysis reports. These deep-dive reports help brand managers determine where there are opportunities for improvement, and where the website is succeeding.
Essentially, these provide a high-level analysis that’s broken down into an easily understandable report that can be presented to the executive or leadership team to help them better understand overall website performance from audiences, onsite behavior, new user acquisition, and more!
As part of this redesign project, we worked with the Carmex team to educate them on using the new website now that its management had been simplified. With the new backend the Carmex brand manager support team would be able to make edits and updates as needed, something they hadn’t been able to do previously. The team was more firmly in control of their website and when they needed assistance or experienced issues they now had an expert web design team they could rely on for ongoing website support and maintenance.
As an Idea client Carmex has direct access to our exceptional customer support manager Haley Langer. She is always happy to answer any questions or concerns that arise. When Haley is not addressing our client’s needs she works diligently to review the site, offer suggestions and create training videos to help Carmex better manage its website. Our dedication to supporting our clients keeps them confident in managing their sites and less reliant on third-party support.
‐ K. Gourlie, Carmex - Top Lip Balm BrandI was skeptical after our other digital agency failed us over and over, but Idea has proven to be an exceptional partner for us.
We’re confident we can help your brand thrive online. Would you like to see more projects?
Founded in 2009. Idea Marketing Group is a top Chicago web design agency that works intimately with consumer brands and manufacturers to help build, maintain, and market websites. See the award-winning work or a specific service like manufacturing web design.
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