Severstal's corporate website
A single digital platform uniting a group of websites and sub-brands of the company. Block-based development, creation of a design system and a digital brandbook
Severstal is a leading producer of steel products and a leader in the metallurgy of the future.
Silver. Best usability / UX
Main problem
The Severstal group includes several sub-brands and enterprises — Cherepovets Steel Mill, Metiz, ITZ, Sheksna, Olkon, Karelskiy Okatysh, Vorkutaugol — and each of them had its own personal website. Previously, we made a single design system for the websites of all the subsidiaries, but now we needed to combine all the business units into a single digital platform that discloses full information about the company, has an easy-to-use catalog on the updated product line and provides access to services for partners and customers.
Key idea
The complexity and versatility of the tasks that the site must solve prompted us to search for a single principle that can be applied at all stages of the project - design, development, content. The principle is maintaining a balance between promotional and corporate style, service and creativity.
The principle of balance allows to set the necessary level of serviceability and creativity on pages of different purposes. For example, divider pages have a promotional look with prominent visual elements of the identity and creative promotional content. And service pages have a straightforward interface, providing users with quick access to the information they need.
Unified design system
A unified design system synced with the new brand and strategy.
During the design phase, it proved critical to develop a unified system of principles, styles, and methods for working on a complex corporate website system. Such a guideline makes it possible to achieve a unified style in page layout, easy scalability and handling of different volumes of information.
The design system for Severstal's site includes 5 schemes of modular layout and 74 types of blocks, or over 200 with alternative designs. On the front end, we used a block-by-block build system based on 1C-Bitrix. 127 pre-built block templates allow to quickly create new pages, as well as to scale and adjust existing ones without involving developers.
As part of our work on Severstal's product and service catalog, we designed 3D models for each product category. Special mention should be made of the work on the adaptation of Severstal's new brand book into digital, which was developed as part of a parallel project — the digital brand book, and affects the visuals of all the company's digital materials, including mobile applications, social networks, newsletters and other channels.
Severstal's corporate website is the result of thorough work at every stage. A serious service story with an emphasis on visual identity. At the same time, the complex architecture inside is supported by simple solutions outside — thanks to the elaborate structure of the unified design system and convenient block-by-block assembly.
