Terracotta, a very successful application developer in the Open Source community, had recently acquired Ehcache and Quartz Scheduler. The problem — they now had three websites with their own design, marketing messaging and objectives. More than that, each organization had their own personalities!

With that problem on its hands, Terracotta turned to ZURB to whip up an integrated and consistent online presence for all three of their properties.

They now had three websites with their own design, marketing messaging and objectives.

Three Different Sites Even at this small level it's apparent that the three websites are very distinct from each other.

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Standing out from the crowd

Marketing websites for enterprise software can be very, very text heavy.

And that?s not exactly easy on the eyes, especially considering that a wide variety of professionals use the site. Among those who use the site are engineers, software architects, CIO/CFOs, and the people that need to keep operations running as smoothly as possible.

So we hit upon the idea of a graphic-rich user interface. This would allow Terracotta to stand out from its competition. Not only that, but the new navigation would support the variety of users and their various interests in the three different properties. We also had to clarify the pages? purpose without mucking up the entire site by letting it be all things to all people.

Ultimately, we made the calls to action crystal clear for the various people using the site. We also made it easy peasy to sell the various Terracotta products across all the properties.

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Only by visualizing real world solutions through interface prototypes were we able to ferret out strategic opportunities capable of growing the business.

So we conducted company interviews, listening to each of their concerns. We then visualized the key moments we heard during those interviews. This crystallized a mess of ideas into four tangible goals that glued the project together ? the story, look and feel, community, and site strategy.

However, Terracotta viewed redesigning all three properties as a big chore. The company was stuck. So we whipped up some lo-fi wireframes to get them unstuck. We borrowed a design pattern from other properties that were consolidated and added a tabbed navigation bar that connected all three of Terracotta?s properties. When we showed the sketch that unified the properties with a slim global navigation, we wow'd Terracotta CMO Lynn Vojvodich, ?You guys earned your keep right there!?

We did a lot more lo-fi sketches that pinned down the flow, interactions and overall layout. We were able to design a complex marketing site in a lot of detail just by using sketches, such as a sidebar that included promotions, tweets, people, and photos to promote the site and give it a very personal feel.

Putting Pen to Paper We sketched out lo-fi wireframes before diving into Photoshop and code.

Giving it meaning

We needed to give the marketing site meaning and actually get us focused on solving real customer and sales problems. To do this, we created touchpoint maps showing the emotional impact of every experience and then tied that to customer workflows.

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The results are in

Terracotta's site now bridged the three different properties together quite nicely.

The site launched fairly quickly and we were able to get the entire Terracotta team on board with a unified design strategy, and rallied the business around creating an entire application suite.

I really like it. A great job of integrating the three sites so that they feel like related technologies. And they look super sexy. It's the first time I've felt proud of our sites. Orion Letizi, Website Lead

The site not only looks great, but the home page focuses on directing people to the appropriate information. The site is also extremely easy to navigate and use.