Fortive
A Content-Driven Drupal 9 Website Redesign
Meet Fortive
Fortive began as a new diversified industrial technology company in 2016 after branching out from Danaher. It consists of several brands, including Northwest leaders like Fluke and Tektronix. Bear Group had successfully developed the Danaher website, so Fortive gave us a call when they needed their inaugural website. We provided support for Fortive through our Run State post-launch support program in recent years.
In 2021, Fortive had grown tremendously and progressed in a direction where significant content updates were needed to reflect what they do today. This is a common driver for a website redesign, as well as a brand refresh, or technology change (we see brands doing major refreshes to their sites every three years on average).
In Fortive’s case, the changes in how the company wanted to present itself from the primary navigation on down, created a substantially different information architecture. There was no major rebranding effort that necessitated it, but the way that they now talk about the business had changed.
During the first iteration of the Fortive website, we worked with Design Hovie Studios, a long-time partner with Bear Group. In this go around, we worked with DoubleKnot creative on the design and UX. They brought exceptional experience and interactivity to the website to help bring it to life. And long-time collaborator, Catherine Carr, at Vitamin-C Creative worked with Fortive on the content and Information Architecture refresh.
Content Strategy First
It's easy to fall into the trap of creating a site map and then scrambling to fill buckets with content once the site is done, but the best sites begin with planning and writing. You are investing time and budget in your site, and it should meet your needs — you shouldn't have to retrofit later.
In Fortive’s case, their content needs were driving the redesign, so naturally they had a content plan, reviewed by many members of the organization, that was completed ahead of the design.
With the content plan in hand, DoubleKnot’s team was able to focus on the Fortive brand, content wireframes, and how to bring those together in meaningful ways with UX and design. We partnered with them on design reviews, and mapping the build plan over several months.
A Custom Drupal 9 CMS
To take advantage of the latest Drupal CMS improvements, we moved Fortive to Drupal 9, and improved the hosting environment. Content was largely redone, so rather than upgrading this build was done from scratch and took advantage of new content types and content structures.
Interactivity was a key feature improvement, and DoubleKnot’s design team introduced more movement and interaction, bringing the new website to life for the end user. This included background video within the javascript rollover effects, text effects, carousels, parallax, and other visual animations and effects.
“Our company has progressed so much since our launch five years ago, bringing changes to our technology and software offering, and the way we talk about our business to all our stakeholders. At the same time, web design and technology have come a long way. So, the time was right to have our website reflect the company we are today.”
— Lucy Sackett, FortiveThe new Fortive website launched in Fall 2021. It’s always a pleasure to work with the brand and communication teams at Fortive!