Summary
In the wake of Reckitt Benckiser’s corporate rebrand, a redesign of the company’s corporate website was required to better align the site with its brand positioning and make the business more attractive to a new, younger target audience, without alienating existing users.
A root and branch review of the website has resulted in an all-encompassing hub for the business,
containing easily accessible and relevant, dynamic multi-user content.
And it’s working – here’s just a taster of the results:
Overall site
- Massive 269 per cent increase in page views per month.
- 150 per cent uplift in site visits.
- Average pages per visit up from 4.07 to 6.04 – a 48 per cent rise.
- Bounce rate dropped from 46 per cent to 33 per cent.
- Average user now spends 17.5 minutes on RB.com.
Careers section
- 56 per cent increase in page views.
- Bounce rate dropped from 34 per cent to 24 per cent.
Our brands section
- 1152 per cent increase in visits.
- 558,880 unique page views in March 2011, up from 44,631 just one year earlier.
About Reckitt Benckiser (RB)
RB is a world leader in household, health and personal care. It’s the fastest growing FMCG company, outperforming its peers and the FTSE. RB is a FTSE top 25 company and since 2000 net revenues have doubled and the market cap has quadrupled. Today it is the global No.1 or No.2 in the majority of its fast-growing categories, driven by an exceptional rate of innovation – an average 35 per cent of net revenue comes from innovations launched in the prior three years.
RB has a strong portfolio led by 19 global Powerbrands which account for 69 per cent of net revenue: Finish, Lysol, Dettol, Vanish, Woolite, Durex, Calgon, AirWick, Harpic, Bang, Mortein, Veet, Nurofen, Clearasil, Strepsils, Gaviscon, Mucinex, Scholl and French’s.
RB people are at the heart of the company’s success. They have an intense drive for progress and action and a desire to outperform wherever they focus, including in CSR where the company has the most ambitious corporate responsibility programme in the industry through its Carbon20 initiative. Headquartered in the UK, the company employs about 27,000 people worldwide, with
operations in over 60 countries and sales in almost 200 countries.
Strategy – how this activity relates to RB’s broader business objectives
The aim of the redesigned website is not to sell more products, but to sell the company to people thinking of starting a career in fast moving consumer goods without alienating shareholders and investors. More specifically, the redesign needed to:
- Raise RB’s profile and drive more traffic to RB.com.
- Broaden the stakeholder content to move towards engaging with younger career-seekers.
- Showcase and exemplify RB’s brand. Present RB as dynamic and contemporary, using a high degree of imagery and direct, short copy.
- Express the personality of RB – ‘The Power behind the Powerbrands’ – entrepreneurial, strong, fast-acting, direct and highly effective, and deliver the promise ‘unleashing performance’.
- Demonstrate that RB is a truly dynamic and exciting place to work, where there’s real opportunity for a fastpaced international career.
- Organically grow the website by creating new areas and refreshing existing ones, as RB’s needs change.
The target audience
The redesign was geared primarily to students, graduates, early career seekers and other FMCG professionals.
Other key audiences include media, shareholders, investors and consumers as well as 27,000 RB employees in 60 countries worldwide.
Media, channels or techniques used
Creativity/originality
RB’s unique, bold personality inspires and demands bold creative solutions. From engaging ways of showing the RB product range in 3D interactive environments such as Powerbrands on the shelf or Products around the home, to a Speedy Guide to RB video on the homepage and an
animated pinboard to introduce the Careers section, the site utilises many interesting and creative techniques to bring the content to life.
Implementation methods
We work closely and flexibly with RB, as the website is an ongoing live project. By working together we allow the website to grow organically as RB’s needs evolve and some ‘real time’ ideas need to be actioned within minutes. We built in a user friendly CMS (Publisite) designed for maximum client flexibility, to ensure the content is always relevant and up to the minute. More specifically, the site contains the following pages:
RB.com homepage
New homepage design launched May 2010. Above the fold image area a dynamic brand video, Speedy Guide to RB, demonstrates the fast pace of life at RB around the world. Animated panels on far right advertise latest corporate promotions – currently the Brand Awareness Campaign aimed at students and early career seekers, and two online games. A ‘ticker-tape’ style banner shows latest news headlines, while core content panels provide the latest information on business performance, career opportunities, latest stories and brands.
Individual sections of site
A home page for each section of the site provides a quick view of the different sections within RB.com. All are aimed at different audiences so express different sides of RB’s business: RB.com/RB-worldwide. The most corporate section of RB introduces the company, its key people, and provides global contact info.
Careers
The most youthful side of RB appeals to graduates and early career seekers.
Innovators
Innovation is the driving force at RB, generating an aboveindustry average percentage of revenue.
Our-brands
Shows RB’s product portfolio in 3D interactive environments.
Our-responsibility
RB shows how it’s making a difference through its environmental and community work – as performance and results-driven as the rest of the business.
Investors-media
Targeted at shareholders, investors and the media, this section contains a wealth of information, financial results in simple, strong language.
Careers
This was originally a separate website with a very different look and feel to the RB brand. The Careers site was relaunched in May 2010, bringing it physically, visually and verbally under the umbrella of RB.com and giving a more integrated user experience. An engaging animated pinboard (which changes according to latest activity) heads up the careers area, and this visual theme is carried on to the lower levels of this section.
Our-brands
This section shows RB’s product portfolio in engaging 3D interactive environments – a supermarket shelf controlled by a moving trolley, and a home where all the rooms and products can be zoomed into for more detail, along with appropriate ‘homey’ sound effects. The 3D supermarket shelf and home were recently updated to include new brands Durex and Scholl. Product advertising can also be found in our brands.
Million Brighter Futures
This ‘microsite’ within RB.com launched in November 2010. We created a campaign brand identity and provided an online area for RB, aimed at both internal and external audiences, to publicise its major corporate sponsorship of Save the Children and showcase the ‘performancedriven’ approach RB takes to its fundraising. Million Brighter Futures inspires RB employees with stories and fundraising ideas to encourage them to raise ever more money for their valued charity partner. It shows how the money is being spent on making a real difference in countries like Angola, Tanzania and India.
The homepage thermometer graphic tracks the total funds raised so far towards the target of £10 million and is updated by RB regularly. Special animations create bold and engaging banners for each section. We created these from many children’s artworks from around the world* to bring the whole microsite to life.
* borrowed from friends, family and Save the Children field camps
Note: Another new area called iPledge will be launched in June 2011 to encourage donations
and let employees ‘talk’ of their charitable endeavours.
Carbon
Formerly another separate microsite, Carbon20 – RB’s ambitious carbon emissions reduction scheme, has been brought under RB.com and the content redesigned to fit with the rest of the website (January 2011).
RB’s country sites:
- Brazil: RB.com/br
- Germany: RB.com/de
- France: RB.com/fr
- Poland: RB.com/pl
RB’s many country websites are steadily being brought in line with the corporate website. Four are live so far with another four in different stages of development. The countries can opt to show their local products in different ways depending on budget, so can choose from simple but lively animations for each product, or a fully recreated.
Products around the home showcasing all their own brands. Each site is available in the local language – so we’ve recently created Polish and Russian versions of our RB font,Kite Display.
RB’s social network sites
RB’s online presence and visual brand execution extends to the most popular social networking sites. All utilise visual assets connected to RB.com, and currently are;
- Facebook: Facebook.com/rb
- Blog: myrbopportunity.com
- Twitter: Twitter.com/discoverrb
- YouTube: YouTube.com/rbworldwide
RB’s online games
RB adds engagement to its online experience by offering a number of games aimed particularly at students, graduates and early career seekers. The games carry a strong sense of branding and the RB spirit, and are advertised throughout RB.com and RB’s social networking sites.
UrbAN THRILL: www.UrbanThrill.com
Online viral freerunning game which ties in with Graduate Outreach Campaign for 2011.
poweRBrands
apps.facebook.com/powerbrands
Online Facebook game – experience a virtual career at RB and aim to become President…
Timescale
The earliest sections of RB’s overhauled website launched in late 2009 (Phase One), however the website continues to be an ongoing process, with many major new sections being launched throughout 2010 and 2011.
Phase One
Planning & design concepts – through 2009
Initial website relaunch – 2009
Phase Two
New homepage – Launched May 2010
Careers section – Launched May 2010
Million Brighter Futures microsite
– Launched November 2010
Phase Three
Carbon20 section – Launched January 2011
Country websites
Germany – February 2010
Brazil – April 2010
France – July 2010
Poland – March 2011
India and Russia – Due to launch June/July 2011
iPledge microsite – Due to launch June 2011
Results
All metrics are measured using Google Analytics – being the widely used, accessible industry standard.
Overall site – measured from March 2010 to March 2011 unless specified otherwise
150 per cent uplift in site visits in March 2011 compared to March 2010.
Average pages per visit up from 4.07 to 6.04 – a 48 per cent rise.
Page views per month now over three million – a massive 269 per cent increase since March 2010.
Bounce rate dropped from 46 per cent to 33 per cent (50 per cent is considered good, lower is better).
RB Homepage – measured from March 2010 to March 2011
Most visited page on RB.com with 2.8 million views.
Page views more than doubled in the past year.
Bounce rate has dropped from 47 per cent to 37 per cent.
Unique views double from 128k to 252k.
Careers section – measured from March 2010 to March 2011 56 per cent increase in page views
Bounce rate dropped from 34 per cent to 24 per cent in the past year.
Our brands section – measured from March 2010 to March 2011.
1,152 per cent increase in visits.
558,880 unique page views in March 2011, up from 44,631 just one year earlier.
Bounce rate dropped from 38 per cent to 31 per cent.
‘Our brands’ section homepage viewed even more than global homepage at 483,360 views in March 2011 (homepage 444,171).
Million brighter futures
Page views increased from 5,595 to 28,591 in just four months.
Urban Thrill game plays reached 250k in the first seven weeks of launch & rising.
Client testimonial
“The content and design of RB.com now perfectly encapsulates our personality – entrepreneurial, strong, fast-acting, direct and highly effective. It’s never easy to create an engaging corporate website with relevance for so many different audiences, but The Workroom understood our needs and turned them into audience benefits.
The results speak for themselves and are testimony that our audiences are enjoying a far better user experience than ever before. We’ve got more traffic and more dwell time throughout the site, especially for our Careers section, a key area to attract younger career-seekers.” Andraea Dawson-Shepherd, SVP Global Corporate Communication & Affairs, Reckitt Benckiser
