The Doe Run Company: Reimagining a Corporate Website Experience

A Leadership Workshop to Define Goals Before a Line of Code Was Written

A half-day strategy workshop with Doe Run’s leadership team, and their public relations partner helped identify and prioritize core audiences and determine key business goals for the site. The primary goals became attracting potential employees, integrating content from multiple sites into single, cohesive and fully-responsive website, improving the user experience and simplifying site maintenance for Doe Run and its partners. To address these objectives, Obata helped execute on the following strategies:

• Provide greater visibility to a wide range of Doe Run career opportunities as well as incorporate employee photos and testimonials
• Improve overall user experience with improved site architecture and updated SEO-friendly content and imagery
• Simplify backend site management by leveraging the intuitive WordPress platform

Two Templates, 150 Pages, and a Consolidated Subsidiary Brand

Close collaboration with the client and their PR partner throughout the planning process, helped lay the groundwork for a successful design solution. Our phased design approach included wireframing, rapid prototyping and A/B testing to quickly develop:

Navigation: A clear, organized global site navigation that was easy-to-navigate across all devices. Content is easy to share through a variety of social channels.

Templates: Two robust templates that would provide the backbone of the site. Development of a single dynamic page and post templates accommodated content variables with design flexibility, while addressing core functionality needs. At launch, more than 90 percent of the 150-pages were populated using these two templates.

A comprehensive Sustainability Report — previously maintained as a standalone annual microsite — was integrated directly into the main site architecture as a permanent, searchable content section.

• The integrated report provides quick access to the CEO letter, social, environmental and economic updates, GRI performance data and index, and management’s approach to GRI issues.
• Within six months of launch, the sustainability report content ranked in the site’s top 10 most-viewed pages — demonstrating that embedding ESG content into the core digital experience, rather than managing it as a separate microsite, significantly improves stakeholder access and engagement.
• Consolidating the sustainability report into the main site also eliminated the recurring cost and effort of maintaining a separate annual microsite — freeing the communications team to focus resources on improving content, stories, and imagery rather than rebuilding the same digital infrastructure each reporting cycle.

Seafab Metals Company web page consolidates previous website content into a single page and integrates into the overall site architecture while retaining its own brand. Refreshed content, new photography (see below), and logo gave the subsidiary a much-needed visual facelift.

Doe Run’s standalone history microsite — spanning more than 160 years of company milestones, archival photography, and narrative — was integrated into the main site architecture as a fully navigable timeline. Preserving the chronological depth and visual integrity of that content within a unified responsive framework required a flexible template approach capable of handling both historical archives and contemporary corporate communications within the same design system.

Calls-to-action that provided clear paths for visitors to find or download additional information on relevant topics

Six Months Post-Launch: Measurable Gains Across Every Key Goal

At the onset, Obata and Doe Run determined key business goals for the website, which included: attracting potential employees, improving the user experience and simplifying site maintenance for Doe Run and its partners. As part of our digital services, Obata helps maintain and optimize performance for clients to ensure success long after project completion.

Our responsive solution focused on improving UX and UI experience coupled with valuable and relevant content. Six months after launch, positive metric trends indicate that our solution is satisfying Doe Run’s website business goals. Newly integrated content – the Sustainability Report and Seafab Metals Company – landed in the top 10 pageviews for the site. Other key trends:

Organizations partner with OBATA for website redesigns that consolidate complex digital ecosystems, integrate sustainability communications, and deliver measurable improvements in user engagement. OBATA’s digital work is part of an integrated practice spanning website strategy, design, development, and ongoing optimization.