multiple devices showing SmartVault's website

SmartVault

SmartVault is an online document storage and sharing solution and their team knows how to get stuff done! The marketing and operations team is constantly creating, optimizing, and adapting content on their website to drive sales. We’ve been building custom templates for them for a few years and were very excited when they came to us wanting to refresh their website.

Overview

SmartVault’s previous website was dated and difficult to manage. It was not mobile responsive and every new page they designed required us to build out a new page template with custom fields. Their integrations and resource sections on the site were in serious need of a facelift as well.

Instead of putting a fresh coat of paint on the site, iWitness Design recommended building the website with a modular approach that would allow us to give them the tools needed to manage new pages without having to come to us to create a new template every time.

Challenge

SmartVault’s website had a ton of content on it. Not just in their integration and resource sections, but there were a lot of landing pages dating back several years that needed to be taken into consideration. We did not have the time to update everything before launching the new site, so it was imperative that the updated WordPress theme could support legacy pages as well.

It was clear that the modular approach was going to be a big hit even in the design phase, but just installing a WordPress page builder on the website wasn’t an option. The new modular interface needed to allow for certain types of customization, allowing editors to adjust content and layout without breaking the overall flow and brand integrity.

Solution

Instead of starting a brand new theme, iWitness Design rebuilt the SmartVault theme from the inside out. This allowed us to maintain backwards compatibility for legacy pages. When an old page was accessed, we would deliver the old style and javascript assets to ensure those pages were delivered correctly.

iWitness Design took the modular designs provided by SmartVault and converted them into custom page builder modules in the Beaver Builder plugin. Each Beaver Builder module was customized to remove the options that were not needed replacing them with custom settings to match the new brand guide. Instead of color pickers and font selectors, we provided an option for different skins so that all of the builder components maintained the integrity of the design.

iWitness Design also completely overhauled the Integrations section providing for advanced filtering and search. The individual integration tiles show up within the main integration page, so we built in additional functionality to ensure each integration still maintained its own SEO footprint. The Resource section was also rebuilt with a fresh new layout and asynchronous filtering and search.

Features

  • Fully customized and tailored page builder
  • Advanced Integrations section
  • Advanced Resource section
  • Fully responsive design
  • SEO optimization

Tech Stack

Result

SmartVault is thrilled with their new website. The new design is having a great effect on their conversion rate and the marketing team now feels empowered to create the content needed without needing to custom develop a new template each time.

“… thank you all for everything you’ve done to make the SmartVault website what I always knew it could be! … I was bound and determined to get the website to a happy place before I left. You guys were instrumental in that …”

– Allie Collins, Director of Operations and Analytics