Cole-Parmer/Antylia Scientific UX Management
Role and Responsibilities
I was the UX and Web Product Manager for Cole-Parmer/Antylia Scientific from August 2015 to November 2023. My primary focus was coleparmer.com and masterflex.com, which together accounted for about $40M in revenue in 2015. When I started, we were Cole-Parmer. In 2021 we rebranded the company as Antylia Scientific.
At the time I came on board, we were a scientific product distributor with a 60-year history. The Cole-Parmer website offered about 100k products and over 800 brands including over 25 proprietary brands. Products ranged from laboratory consumables like glassware and tubing to desktop equipment like balances and scales, meters and centrifuges all the way to capital equipment like freezers and ovens. The company’s core competency was fluid handling, featuring highly regarded Masterflex peristaltic pumps. A variation of the Cole-Parmer site, masterflex.com was specifically dedicated to promoting that brand.
Initially my team consisted of two hybrid web designers a merchandiser and myself. Over time I was promoted to Senior Manager and took on responsibility for managing the Paid Search, SEO and Amazon teams. I added a third designer who developed FED competency.
My team designed, produced and implemented all content (excluding product data and the blog) including technical articles, brand pages, category pages, homepage updates, etc. We designed new site features and worked with IT on implementation. We provided the entire tip to tail process from ideation to design, html development, production and QA. I personally served as site manager, defining the roadmap and working with IT to prioritize and implement the backlog. I developed site strategy, synthesized analytics and reported out on progress. I was also hands-on, developing site pages, producing promotion codes and publishing all “in prod” edits.
Accomplishments
While there were many challenges, my team and I were extremely effective at addressing them and we accomplished a great deal at Antylia. These are some of the highlights.
Coleparmer.com and masteflex.com redesign and stabilization
- I was brought on board to support a major site redesign. Coleparmer.com was a global site with instances in several countries the masterflex.com variant. We worked with an agency to redesign the site into a responsive design with seven different instances in three different languages on a completely new platform. The team hit all of our deadlines and within months of launch, the new site was outperforming the old one. Within five years we had grown by over $30M.
Introducing process and an awareness of UX
- At the time I joined, nobody at the organization knew what UX was. I developed learning materials, documentation and brownbag presentations to help stakeholders understand our core competencies and web site opportunities. I documented how the website worked.
- There was very little process in place. Antylia did not employ project managers or business systems analysts. In the vacuum, UX took on that role, managing our own projects. Over time I worked with various teams to bring in systems for ticketing, project management and information sharing.
Getting the most out of small teams
- For most of my time at Antylia we had three UX designers, myself and three IT developers supporting more than 10 sites on several different platforms. Once we added an SEO lead to the team, the project backlog grew substantially. I worked very closely with the VP of Marketing, IT and our business partners to ensure the backlog was appropriately prioritized to meet our goals. I took on as much as possible to free up my team to execute on projects and assumed a hands-on role as needed.
Page speed reductions and site optimization
- During the site redesign, our vendor failed to meet their page speed targets. When Google went to a mobile-first model we started to see a drop in SEO performance. My team worked with IT to build a roadmap of technical SEO projects and was able to shave about a second and a half off the mobile page speed. This significantly improved our ranking.
- I also worked closely with SEO to develop our content strategy and backlog, ensuring the content we produced would provide optimal value.
Item detail page marketing modules
- At relaunch, all item pages were dynamically driven by data in our PIM. We lacked tools to customize marketing on individual pages. We worked with IT to design and implement a series of marketing components on the IDP allowing us to cross-sell, add banners and promote product systems. We saw a growth in AOV from about $500 to about $700.
Masterflex sale to Avantor for $2.9 Billion
- Masterflex was a key business unit within the organization. It was our most differentiated product line with a highly lucrative consumables component. The Masterflex team was our most reliable partner at Antylia. For a long time it represented the bulk of our work backlog. After years of effective product development sand brand marketing, leadership sold the brand to Avantor for a reported $2.9 Billion. We believe our efforts contributed greatly to the transaction.
Online returns and other self-service projects
- With small teams, customer self-service was a major focus for the organization. Providing self-service tools enabled us to reduce the call-in load to customer service. UX developed key workflows like returns and guided selling to support this initiative.
Guided selling components
- Many of our products and product families were quite complicated, supporting a variety of specific applications (which is hugely important for regulated companies). We implemented a variety of interactive means for helping customers identify specific solutions.
Application workflows
- Workflows provide a map of all the components required in a system to carry out a specific application. We developed interactive workflows that demonstrated how Cole-Parmer supported their customer each step of the way.
New site launches
- Spexprotects.com – a site we deployed during Covid lockdown to showcase our PPE solutions. Built rapidly on the Shopify platform.
- Antylia.com – a corporate portal we developed to support the company rebranding. Developed on Wordpres.s
- Environmentalexpress.com – completely redesigned site for the brand/business unit. Built on the Salesforce commerce cloud.
Acquisitions, migrations and rebrands
- Continual changes to the business plan required us to be nimble. We evolved from a distributor model to a manufacturer. As we grew our catalog, we acquired more and more businesses which needed to be integrated into our offering. Often these products were rebranded under existing proprietary brands
- This rebranding did create messaging issues. It also impacted SEO performance and made it harder for customers to find the products they needed. We applied best practices in messaging to customers, leveraged paid search and implemented on-site constructs to ameliorate any confusion.
The Coleparmer.com Redesign
When I joined Cole-Parmer, a re-platforming and redesign project was underway with a third-party agency. The discovery phase was complete and the team was about to begin designing a new website. I quickly got up to speed on the company structure and core product offering. I met with representatives from various areas of the business, reviewed existing personas and listened to customer calls.
We were moving from a proprietary content management system to a hybrid Insite/Oracle Endeca solution. This was an IT driven project so the scope for experience improvements was limited.
THE CHALLENGE
The site was clunky and outdated, built on a very limited propriety platform. Updates were time consuming, required technical expertise and marketing features were limited. Project was led by IT and focused on technical enhancements.
SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES
- Move the site onto a new PIM, CMS and Search Platform
- Upgrade the look and feel but maintain the existing branding
- Develop a responsive mobile experience
- Introduce a parent/child product structure
- Full google analytics implementation and SEO best practices
- Launch free-standing, localized versions in the US, Canada, China, Germany, India, the UK and for Masterflex.com
- Translate the complete interface and thousands of products into Chinese and German
- Improve the features for marketing and develop a promotions engine
- Rework the site taxonomy
- Provide more content opportunities
ROLES
- We worked with a third-party agency on the redesign and replatforming
- I was UX Lead on the client side, as well as design and production
- Laura Santucci and Ryan Sherwood were co-UX leads on this project.
- Max Nadjari and Steve Farbota were IT leads.
- We all worked multiple late nights getting this experience launched.
The Original Site Design When I Joined
Design began immediately. UX created requirements for each section, based on learnings from discovery and the personas that were developed. We reviewed and provided feedback on the agency’s designs. Once the general design and sitemaps were finalized, we created comps for remaining sections. Basic usability testing was handled in-house with product managers and customer service agents as proxies.
Once the US site design was complete, we migrated content from the production site and began the translation process. While some content could be translated through spreadsheets the bulk of the material had to be input blindly by my team (none of us spoke German or Chinese). Our global teams reviewed implementation.
We completed our tasks and, after some protracted IT troubleshooting, launched the new coleparmer.com in December of 2016.
Results of the Redesign
Original Category Drilldown
Redesigned Category Drilldown with Supplemental Content and Cross-Marketing Components
Site improvements at launch
- Improved look and feel
- UX best practice implementation
- SEO best practice implementation
- Fully mobile-responsive
- Seven site variants: US/Domestic, Canada, China, Germany, India, UK, Masterflex
- Three languages: English, Chinese and German. We later introduced a French site and French translation
- Introduced parent/child relationship for products where like items were grouped under a common parent, reducing sprawl in search results
- Standardized product taxonomy and new mega menus
- Account lists and order history
- An improved CMS platform
- Robust promotions engine
Site Governance and Growth
Launching the new site was a major accomplishment, but that alone was not our measure of success. As was expected, there was a short-term drop in some KPIs. We added an SEO specialist to my team and I worked with her to to develop a plan to improve our technical SEO performance. Within three months we had resolved some of our key issues and began outperforming the previous site.
In 2016 we saw year over year revenue growth of 15%. Within five years we had grown revenue from $38M to $71M on coleparmer.com alone. I developed a roadmap for the site experience and entered a backlog of design and IT tickets into our ticketing system. I served as product owner for the web site, managing the backlog, working with IT on project prioritization and meeting with representatives across the business to determine priorities. All of this was managed through the lens of what was most important for the customer and most likely to improve revenue.
Example Enhancement: Item Detail Page Marketing Zones
The item and product pages for the new site were dynamically generated from data in the PIM, making it possible for non-technical employees to contribute to the site. However this was limited to item specifications and did not support custom marketing. The business wanted to be able to cross-sell related products and upsell advanced products.
One of the first things we did on the new site was a followup project to introduce marketing modules like cross-sells, alternate products and banners on to individual item pages.
Within a few months we added multiple marketing zones to the item pages. We analyzed data to determine which items were most often bought with other items and cross-marketed those on appropriate pages. We saw a jump in AOV and transactions.
THE CHALLENGE
We were unable to add marketing messages and banners to the item detail pages except for in product copy.
MY ROLE
- Project lead, scope and direction
- Specifications
THE TEAM
- Laura Santucci and Ryan Sherwood were UXAs on the project
- Max Nadjari and the IT team worked with a third party vendor on development
- The entire team helped with UAT
Example Enhancement: Guided Selling Modules
Many of the products that Cole-Parmer sells are quite complicated with very specific scientific applications. We continuously developed tools to help customers self-service and reduce the load on customer support. One important area of exploration for us was guided selling, helping customers narrow their product options by answering simple questions. We experimented with very complex tools that produced elegant results but the development time was too long. I envisioned a very simple tool that could be easily built in HTML for categories with shallow decision trees. The result was our proprietary selection guides that we were able to develop quickly and implement throughout the site.
The customer answers a series of simple question, eventually leading to a subcategory, product or specific item.
THE CHALLENGE
We wanted to create a simple guided selling module that would help customers narrow their product assortment quickly, based on natural language interactions, and that would be easy to develop and roll out quickly on many of our leading product categories.
MY ROLE
- Project lead, scope and direction
- I defined the concept
THE TEAM
- Bryan Caselli was lead UX and FED on the proof of concept.
- He worked with representatives of the product management team to define the decision tree.
Example Site Redesign: Environmental Express
The original site, envexp.com was built on an ancient version of Joomla and had become almost impossible to update. The appearance and experience were massively dated and pricing was not visible to unauthenticated customers. I was charged with leading a project to redesign the site to a more modern look and feel, consistent with our other properties, while moving to our centralized PIM and the Salesforce commerce cloud platform. The idea was that we’d leverage efficiencies from our recently implemented Salesforce instance.
I worked with a third-party agency and designer from the EE team to completely redesign and build out the site. We maintained the previous product taxonomy structure, which was applications based, but added a products-based taxonomy that made it easier to search for specific items.
While the Salesforce platform provided many challenges for us, we were able to design workarounds that provided a great customer experience and met our target timeline and requirements.
THE CHALLENGE
The site was on an ancient version of Joomla and was unmanageable. The appearance was very clunky and dated, deeply needed an upgrade.
SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES
- Move the site onto a new PIM, CMS and E-commerce platform. Our Marketing VP chose Salesforce commerce cloud.
- Upgrade the look and feel and introduce the more common Cole-Parmer taxonomy approach.
- Develop a responsive mobile experience
- Introduce a parent/child product structure
- Full google analytics implementation and SEO best practices
- Migrate all existing content and support the legacy taxonomy structure that was application based.
- Introduce pricing visibility for guest users
ROLES
- We worked with a third-party agency on the redesign and replatforming
- I was UX Lead on the client side, as well as design and production
- Sada Thursby, Dwain Cardona, Joe Boyd and the rest of the Environmental Express team played key roles.
- Max Nadjari was IT lead on the client side.
Example Site Launch: Antylia Scientific
In 2021 the organization rebranded as Antylia Scientific. We had acquired and integrated many new companies and the business model had changed from distributor to manufacturer. Cole-Parmer no longer represented what we had become. Antylia was envisioned as a fresh start for us that better defined who we were as an organization.
The Antylia Scientific site was designed as a company portal to share information with employees and potential investors. We developed and launched the site in about three months with the help of a third party agency. I served as project manager and lead UX on the client site, representing the business interests and ensuring that the site was built to spec.
THE CHALLENGE
After acquiring many different companies we had evolved to become a very different organization than the original Cole-Parmer. We wanted to rebrand and tell the story of who were were now. And we needed to stand up a corporate site as quickly as possible.
SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES
- Develop a new identity for the organization
- Tell the story of Antylia Scientific
- Stand up a site as quickly. as possible. We chose the WordPress platform.
ROLES
- We worked with a third-party agency on the new identity and design, also with the website development and launch.
- Marketing VP Andy Carlson was lead.
- I provided UX support and other assistance throughout the project.
