Milliken’s Textiles Division Launches a Comprehensive, Scalable Website

Milliken’s two separate textile divisions converged to create the behemoth Performance & Protective Textiles (PPT) division. Sewing these two entities together presented some challenges in developing a new website. 16 separate websites/microsites were representing PPT’s extensive array of product offerings. The main goal for the new and improved PPT site was to weave all microsites into one cohesive presence that is easy to administer and update. Milliken PPT wanted the new site to align with their identity to increase brand awareness and provide a better user experience to consumers. 

Industry  /  Manufacturing

Milliken has been a leader in the textile industry since the early 1900s and remains one of the few textile manufacturers still based in the U.S. Milliken has a history deeply rooted in innovation and carries that tradition into every project. The company is a leader in the research and development of functional textiles for all industries. Milliken has been granted 2,500+ patents in the United States alone, with over 5,500 patents worldwide.

Solutions

  • Website Development
  • Responsive Front-End Design
  • Paid Search Strategy
  • Custom Programming
  • Sitefinity CMS
  • Messaging & Copywriting

Keep It Simple, Sites

Roger West knew that Milliken’s products speak for themselves and wanted their website’s new architecture to do just that. By bringing the 16 sites together, Roger West was able to establish an intuitive hierarchy, creating parent pages, or “market” pages, with corresponding children, aka “solution” pages containing valuable information such as features, media, and PDF downloads.

The Milliken website family tree grew, with the “solution” pages spawning into “product” pages. Product pages provide detailed profiles of Milliken products presented to users in tabs offering various specifications, alternatives, care sheets, and certifications. Roger West also worked to rebrand a few key products, such as Milliken’s fire-resistant textile options, to secure a successful new site launch.

The construction of a cohesive website with user-friendly navigation was paramount to attracting and maintaining traffic driven to the site through paid search campaigns and SEO optimization. This simplification increased user sessions while extending the amount of time users spent on each page, generating interest and improving brand awareness.

Functional Design

Milliken PPT’s new site included:

  • Site search customization and capabilities with a backend search crawler, ensuring that even misspellings or typos yield relevant (and shareable) returns.
  • A custom Google Map providing a centralized place displaying Milliken’s manufacturing locations, sales offices, and corporate headquarters.
  • Fresh photographs of Milliken’s headquarters, associates, facilities, textile, and products.

Results

385%

increase in new users

375%

increase in new user sessions

385%

increase in page views

Buttoned Up Content

The previous 16 sites for Milliken’s division had been running on a tangled spool of different content management systems, from WordPress to outdated legacy systems, all being administered and updated separately (if at all).

Roger West brought these sites together within Progress Sitefinity, an enterprise-level .NET content management system, to simplify site management on the back end, ultimately improving the front-end user experience.

Milliken’s site now features several forms of shared content, lists, and resources to make managing content easier.

Need help with website planning and digital marketing? Roger West can weave you an integrated strategy. Let’s talk.

It’s made an enormous difference for us to have one centralized place to direct our customers to where they can find everything they need. I find the site easy and intuitive to use. It’s made my job much easier and our customer experience much better.”

Meg Ried
Marketing Manager, Performance & Protective Textiles Division, Milliken & Company