FoodChain ID: Institutional Voice and Public-Facing Architecture for a Category-Leading Certifier
The client and the stakes
FoodChain ID was the leading certifier behind the Non-GMO Project’s butterfly label — the consumer-facing mark becoming a household symbol on grocery shelves across North America. Non-GMO verified sales had grown past $11 billion annually and were headed toward $40 billion. The company’s website was the primary channel through which retailers, food manufacturers, and suppliers found FoodChain ID and entered the certification pipeline. But the company didn’t yet sound like the leader it had become.
The problem
The brand voice across FoodChain ID and its sibling entities under the Global ID Group was inconsistent, each subsidiary sounding like a different company. The website itself was cobbled together and did not inspire the confidence a serious buyer needs before entering a rigorous annual certification process. A company defining an emerging market was presenting itself as if it were still one option among many, at exactly the moment when that positioning mattered most.
What I did
- Owned the institutional voice across the business. Over a year of interviews with the CEO, division director, and department heads across FoodChain ID and its sibling subsidiaries under the Global ID Group, I established and held a coherent brand voice across all public-facing writing.
- Designed the site architecture from scratch. Set the page structure, navigation, and path a prospective customer would travel from arrival through to enrollment, adding new sections where the funnel needed them.
- Wrote every page. Each written to the specific concerns of a different customer type — retailers, private label brands, ingredient suppliers, co-packers — and shaped to move them toward certification.
- Led the project end-to-end. Set scope and timeline, directed the collaboration with the external development lead, and managed the internal stakeholders who needed to sign off along the way.
The result
The rebuilt site presented FoodChain ID as the category leader it was and delivered a 280% increase in prospects entering the certification pipeline. The voice work carried forward into subsequent marketing and expansion.
In the words of the project’s lead web developer:
“Warren’s management of the FoodChain ID website redesign project made it one of the most streamlined and successful collaborations I’ve worked on in years. His writing, organization and consensus-building skills were absolutely essential to the on-time and on-budget launch, not to mention the greatly improved performance and conversion rate of the new website.”
— Alek Lisefski, Lead Web Developer, Blue Sheep Solutions
The through-line
FoodChain ID was already the category leader. Its voice wasn’t yet. Finding that voice and building the site around it is the work.