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Aster Brands Development & Content Strategy
Strategy, Copywriting, UX, Development, SEO, Ongoing Support
When it comes to manufacturing powerhouse Aster Brands, it may be faster to list what they don’t provide to the world of concrete manufacturing. With six brands (and growing) across their portfolio, Aster Brands is a B2B and B2C company that provides manufacturers around the world with lasting, innovative, and aesthetically pleasing solutions to their concrete manufacturing needs. From retaining walls to garden walls, they’ve got it all. And since 2019, Ample has assisted them with web development and maintenance, internationalization, SEO, and content strategy, building a strong partnership that, in our opinion, just keeps getting better. Read on to explore the ways Ample has collaborated with Aster Brands over the years.
When Aster Brands called us in 2019, they were in a bit of a pickle – their primary website vendor had folded, and they had no one to maintain their proprietary CMS. Time was of the essence to get their websites onto a new CMS that was scalable, secure, and fast. The task: Maintain the front end of their site, but replatform the back-end CMS to make it usable again.
We made the decision to break out the CMS into six (at the time) different sites, using one front-end codebase and six instances of the same CMS. This not only allowed each site to perform better, but also ensured longevity to the existing system.
Over the years, we’ve navigated many challenges brought on by the shifting landscape of Aster Brands’ front-end framework, Strapi. Despite this, we’ve managed to work around the performance issues of Strapi, writing custom plug-ins, providing better management tools, and creating a custom solution for previewing content in real time when Gatsby Cloud was shut down. It’s taken some innovation and many hours of work from our dev team, but the suite of Aster Brands sites are still performing and scaling to meet their needs in 2024.
In order to decrease support calls and heighten site engagement, our client needed a knowledge hub with an optimized tagging and filtering system for their multitude of solutions, offerings, and how-to guides. They also needed a cohesive system that would function across all ten of their sites. Ample designed and built a content hub that is based on real user journeys and needs. It provides Aster Brands' knowledgeable customer base with an intuitive tagging system that helps them filter down to exactly the type of content they want to see, regardless of how niche. Each knowledge hub page is also equipped with the ability to filter in content from the rest of the site, suggesting related topics based on user interest. Not only are customers able to find the information they need easier than before – the Aster Brands team is also able to answer their customer's questions more efficiently.
This integration with Netsuite allows users to find and connect with a local seller of Aster Brands’ products via an easy-to-use zip code lookup.
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Redi-Rock contractors and engineers input details about their retaining or gravity wall, and this handy tool compiles a wealth of information based on the data provided.
Although this tool was built pre-Ample, we’ve updated it throughout the years so that its fans (Redi-Rock clients) don’t start a riot.
This app allows architects and engineers to build out diagrams of their wall project in an open canvas. The app will tell them how many pallets they need in order to make their wall a reality.
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When trying to decide between pre-cast and cast-in-place, contractors and project managers can now input their project information.
They get an exact calculation of time and money saved when they choose to use Polebase.
When logged in, users get access to a special resources dropdown menu with hidden sales and marketing resources – exclusively for logged in users.
Best of all, this system functions with the same login across websites.
Ample performed SEO research, optimization, and implementation for three of Aster Brands’ companies – Redi-Rock, Rosetta Hardscapes, and Truemont Materials – with a focus on boosting existing content to further drive relevant traffic to their sites. We ran an extensive audit that included top recommended keywords to target for each page, along with suggested URLs and copy for each. We also provided an SEO Looker dashboard that tracks performance metrics by brand and intent. Finally, we helped the Aster Brands team implement some of these findings by updating existing pages with stronger, SEO-ready copy.
With a global portfolio of brands, our client has strong footprints in France and Germany. Therefore, all of their sites needed an extensible, scalable strategy to make each one accommodating to international visitors. Ample introduced internationalization features that allow the Aster Brands team to make all edits from the same CMS, easily switching between the English, French, and German versions of the same page.
They can swap images to showcase products in different locales, and effortlessly track performance metrics for each page and country. As they continue to grow, their sites will scale with them – no matter what country they decide to expand to next.
After many years working closely with our development team, Aster Brands collaborated with Ample’s creative team on content strategy in 2024. As a part of this partnership, we were able to construct an in-person, full-day workshop at their headquarters in Petoskey, Michigan, concentrating on strengthening existing content initiatives, devising new strategies to better support goals across brands, and getting the whole team together to exchange and fuel ideas.
In the months following, we worked to help put things into motion – from paid media strategy and creation to SEO content writing. Another remote workshop for Rosetta Hardscapes helped to break down the brands’ audience even further, aligning key user journey steps with necessary content for each group.
"Getting to know the people behind the brand allows us all to better understand the goals and limitations behind the work and invent better processes and better deliver better results. There is no replacement for spending time with people — sharing ideas, food, drinks and stories. It’s the subtle human connections that happen between sessions that open the door to better interactions and truly great ideas."
– Kevin Comer, Ample Creative Director
Ample created a unique landing page for Rosetta Hardscapes that functions as an instructive, interactive guide for homeowners looking to start an outdoor remodel project. Not quite a support article, not quite a blog post – the guide combines stunning visuals with UX design, copy, and easy-to-use tools like a budget calculator, a contractor finder tool, and links to explore Rosetta products and design inspiration. As we continue to help bring this page design to other brands, the focus will remain on enriching user experience and making it easier than ever for visitors and manufacturing partners to find the information and experience they need.
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“The partnership we’ve created with the Ample team has played a pivotal role in our Marketing Success. Our teams have meshed really well and collaborate to create some amazing technology solutions. Our team also really likes to understand how our system works and the Ample team does a great job explaining everything at a level that non-technical people can really comprehend.”
- Mattie Meadows, Marketing Manager, Aster Brands
We’re proud of every project we’ve helped Aster Brands bring to life, but much of that work could not have been completed without a lot of behind the scenes “renovation.” Working within the limitations of an older site architecture, our dev team has refactored and reengineered some of the site code in order to allow us to add new features – such as the brand new knowledge hub. Ample offers ongoing support and check-ins to make sure platforms are still serving our client – telling them ahead of time if something looks like it may cause trouble. This helps to circumvent things like crashes, outages, and visitor overwhelm.
While many agencies may advise their clients with older web architecture like Strappi and Gatsby to “scrap and start over,” Ample has dug into older code and expired methods to keep these sites updated and modernized without destroying the existing architecture. This allows our client to truly capitalize on the initial investment they made without sacrificing speed, design, or user experience.
