Back in the summer of 2005, a friend approached me about a corporate and Intranet website redesign project for Ryerson, Inc. – North America’s leading steel & metals distributor. The Director of Information Technology had put together a strategic internal development committee, which included members of corporate communications, and the manager of emerging technology. Since a creative team I managed had done a prior website redesign for Ryerson in 2000, my familiarity and rapport with the company, its services, and its goals gave me a foundation for understanding the needs. Trusted business relationships make a world of difference in the creative process and so I was excited to work with such a great client again!
Redesigning Ryerson’s Corporate Website
With this redesign, Ryerson’s team was looking for a simple, contemporary look for their corporate web site – one that incorporated the new company logo colors and had a more substantial photo presence. Another goal was to increase the site’s usefulness to the user, and make it easier for people to get from place to place within the site. Final goals included highlighting the company’s name change (from the former Ryerson Tull), reflecting the completed integration of Integris Metals, and making sure all of the content was current. While Ryerson, Inc. was growing and emerging, it was important that we reaffirmed some of the company’s most lasting commitments as a local company that operated service centers close to where their customers did business.
Getting after the many tasks at hand, the committee and my team started conducting research, exploring other websites both within and outside the industry. Ryerson’s IT department tracked the existing site’s highest traffic areas, and we worked out exactly what array of content, design, and delivery we wanted for the new site. Some of the most important elements were Ryerson’s products and services, service center locations, and investor information. Another obvious goal was search engine optimization, and we made sure to use keywords, tags, and other strategically developed page content in order to boost the site’s performance and visibility. Since search engines reward sites that are constantly updating their content (as opposed to static, “flat-lined” sites), it was important to design the site with these capabilities in mind.
On to Artie: Revamping Ryerson’s Intranet
Web 2.0 Artie
Once we’d implemented the corporate redesign, and set its updating process in motion, we moved on to Artie, the name of Ryerson’s internal website. Accessible only to Ryerson personnel, Artie contains the many resources the company shares with its employees: back in 2005, that included integrating features and information from the former Integris Metals internal site – another steel distributor Ryerson had recently acquired.
On July 14, 2005, Ryerson’s new Artie rolled out company-wide, using a corporate color scheme, and featuring an online “mascot” character named “Artie” that we had originally designed in 2001. Features within the site included safety procedures, corporate policies, a newsletter and announcement listings, industry and metal price links, a corporate phone directory, organization charts, and links to ordering business cards, merchandise, and downloadable letterhead templates. An extremely popular Ask Artie feature also gave employees a place to go for answers to company-related questions. Just like the corporate website, Artie was designed to be changing and updating constantly, and employees had the opportunity to suggest changes themselves.
It was great to see such a large corporate project come to fruition. Both the corporate and internal sites recieved great reviews, and increased both customer and employee satisfaction. Artie took on a life of his own, and remains popular within the company to this day! In fact, we are currently doing some Artie updates that will enable the beloved character to better integrate within a new Intranet delivery platform.
Headstand Media and its customer, 
