A new product division was launching soon. The current website lacked the capability to properly handle it. The gap between what existed and what was needed turned into something much bigger than a touch up.
When I joined LaPorte Products, the existing website had served the business since 2017 – and it showed. A disjointed brand, a customer journey that no longer matched how products were described or sold, and a backend that told the story of years of reactive, piecemeal changes. When a new Furnishings division was preparing to launch, the question of whether the site could support it had a clear answer: no.
That gap was an opportunity.
2017
LAST MAJOR SITE UPDATE
9
SITES MANAGED EXTERNALLY
3
PHASES PLANNED
Starting with a UX Audit
Before any formal project existed, I started taking notes. I walked through the existing website the way a customer would – a boating enthusiast, new to the brand, trying to find and configure a product. I followed every path. I clicked every button. I noted every moment the experience asked something unreasonable of the user.
Then I formalized it. Over 14 sections of the site, I documented more than 80 individual findings – from cosmetic inconsistencies to broken core functionality. The mobile navigation had completely disappeared on tablet and smaller viewports. The furniture customizer was broken sitewide, loading to 100% and never rendering. A critical order form accepted out-of-range measurements silently – letting customers reach checkout with a cart total of $0.00.
“I wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already suspect – but I was giving them something they didn’t have: a documented, prioritized case for rebuilding.”
To make the findings actionable, I built a two-axis scoring system – Severity (S0–S4) and Ease to Fix (E0–E4) – and rated every finding against both dimensions. This made triage straightforward: high-severity, easy fixes surfaced immediately as quick wins; high-severity, high-effort items formed the backbone of the rebuild proposal. It gave leadership a way to see the problem not just as a list of complaints, but as a risk-weighted roadmap.
One of the audit’s most consequential recommendations wasn’t a UI fix at all. The existing navigation buried products in an inconsistent hierarchy – some under a top-level “Product” dropdown, others promoted as standalone nav items with no clear logic. I recommended reorganizing the entire product catalog into two natural families: Marine and Furnishings. This wasn’t just a nav cleanup – it was the structural argument for why a single tangled site couldn’t serve all three, and why each deserved its own dedicated digital presence.
The audit concluded with a full redesign estimate: 14 to 29 weeks end-to-end, broken into Discovery, UX Design, Development, Testing, and Launch phases. That wasn’t a number I invented – it was the honest shape of the work the findings demanded. It became the framework for the proposal that followed.
Shaping the Vision
The audit gave leadership a language for the problem. Now the question was what to do about it. A small project team began to form, and with it, bigger questions. The product family structure I’d recommended – Marine and Furnishings – wasn’t just a navigation fix. It was an architectural argument: three distinct audiences, three distinct purchase journeys, three sites that could actually do justice to each.
“The new Furnishings site wouldn’t just fill a gap. It would be the proof of concept for an entirely new digital foundation at LaPorte.”
Inspired by how large manufacturers like Honda structure their digital presence, the proposal took shape: break the single tangled site into a family of purposeful properties – a main landing hub, with each division living as its own fully-capable subsite. Build Furnishings first as the design and technology model. The Marine site and a new landing site would follow. The architecture would finally match the business.
Building the Business Case
Before a single design decision was made, I mapped how an order actually moved through the company – from the website, through accounting, into production, and beyond. Working cross-functionally with sales and supply chain, I turned that map into something leadership could act on: a clear picture of where complexity was creating cost, and where a better digital infrastructure could recover it.
That exercise shaped the proposal. Two phases were scoped (later expanded to three): build the Furnishings site first as the design and tech model, then migrate the Marine site into a proper division hub under a new LaPorte landing experience. Phase one would prove the concept. The rest would follow.
With the owner’s approval secured, it was time to design.
Stay tuned for Part 2: Designing for a Market That Doesn’t Sell Online!