FMI Corporation

Pedrera provides FMI Corporation with comprehensive web services, including website design, ExpressionEngine development, performance optimization, and hosting management.

FMI Corporation

FMI is a leading consulting and investment banking firm dedicated to serving companies working within the built environment. FMI’s sector expertise and broad range of solutions help our clients discover value drivers, build resilient teams, streamline operations, grow with confidence and sell with optimal results.


Presenting a Harmonized Family of Brands

There were a number of issues with FMI’s previous website. One stemmed from FMI’s structural dichotomy. FMI Consulting and FMI Capital Advisors, the company’s two business units, offered disparate services. There was some degree of overlap, but these businesses needed to be marketed clearly and distinctly, yet within a harmonized system that was coherent.

FMI brands mobile websites

Pedrera worked with Marketri, the firm’s marketing consultant, and the FMI web team to create a website information architecture, navigation system and interface design that presented FMI corporation and the two business units effectively. The parent company, FMI Corporation, was assigned an orange color, while FMI Consulting and FMI Capital Advisors were assigned blue and green. By using colors in the design as a “signal”, users are able to identify how a web page or content item fits into the organizational structure. And by keeping the core design patterns like layout and navigation consistent, moving between sections of the website is not a jarring experience.

Migrating and Refining Legacy Content

Another challenge with the old FMI website related to how it was originally built and maintained thereafter.

The old website was built in WordPress, and the limitations of how the CMS was implemented meant that marketers had resorted to injecting a lot of formatting in the body of the “main content” WYSIWYG field. Over time, with many different managers working in the CMS over the years, this had predictable results. The web pages were inconsistent, they had invalid code, they did not work responsively on mobile devices, and they just looked bad. In addition, content editors had not been working with an established taxonomy. This meant that there were content tags with single entries, redundant and duplicate tags, misspelled tags, etc.

WordPress to ExpressionEngine import templates

At the onset of the website project, the FMI marketing team established a valid taxonomy for their content. Pedrera then imported the old website content into the new ExpressionEngine CMS with a “legacy” content field. This content could be cleaned up, or ignored when the new content fields were in use. Over time, the legacy content would no longer be used. Moreover, a system was set up in the CMS to allow content to be retagged with the correct taxonomy in bulk. This approach allowed hundreds of valuable content items to be moved, preserving their SEO value without delaying the launch of the new website.


Meaningful Results

Five-star review from FMI for websiteFeedback from the project stakeholders has been highly positive, as they feel that the new website accurately reflects the quality of their company. In terms of concrete metrics, the Google Analytics values for users, sessions and pageviews have all increased about approximately 50%. PageSpeed load times have been improved by 60%, which has been critical for mobile users.

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Client: FMI Corporation
URL: https://fmicorp.com/
Services:
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