Kao Chemicals international website development

Kao Chemicals, a world-leading manufacturer in sectors like hygiene, beauty and health, with decades of innovation history, had a website that was obsolete on every front — technology, design and content — and did not convey what the company stands for in the global market. So they briefed RSB to fully rethink the website.

The project's complexity lay in restructuring a large volume of information, with an extensive sector- and industry-driven structure, so that users could easily find the information they were looking for, without forgetting a much cleaner and more contemporary brand image.

RSB has carried out both an upfront brand study and an SEO audit, from which it has extracted enough keyword and competitor intelligence to propose a new site information architecture — building on the foundation provided by the client — that allows every piece of content to be reached in a minimum number of clicks and that optimises the placement of the most relevant pages, trying not to lose organic ranking even though one of the build's requirements was unifying 3 languages into 1, dropping the language that was driving the most visits.

Wireframes were presented for the entire site before any design work, paying close attention to the placement of every featured piece of information, with special focus on the search engine and its filters, which had to let users locate a chemical product within a large pool of features and definitions — sometimes very similar to each other — with the least possible friction.

RSB has built a 100% editable site with a tailor-made CMS, ready for automated product updates integrated with the company's database, and prepared to host a private area that enables direct communication with KAO's clients.

RSB has worked on an SEO strategy for the site, aimed at offsetting the loss of the main language in organic-traffic terms with technical optimisations and the production of relevant content in the site's only language, English.