Outdoor Research, the outdoor apparel maker, this week launched a new web site offering customers a stronger brand experience, more in-depth product information, additional tools to help navigate the product collection, and greater social media integration, among other new capabilities.

The site, created by the Chicago-based web development agency Gorilla, will serve as a global brand platform as Outdoor Research simultaneously continues to grow in domestic and international markets, said Charlie Lozner, Outdoor Research Director of Marketing.

Launched using the Magento web application, the design also allows Outdoor Research to effectively organize content for different regions, sales channels, and languages. The new platform features web sites specifically for the U.S., Canada, Japan and Government markets. More regional sites for other international markets are slated to follow in the coming year.

Development of the new web site follows a number of milestones as Outdoor Research celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2011. Since 2003, Outdoor Research has realized a nearly five-fold increase in sales, launched a technical apparel division in 2007 that now accounts for approximately half of its commercial business, and raised the bar on product design in all its categories. In the past year, looking to the future, it hired for nine new in-house positions in product development, design, IT and sales oversight, as well as hiring for roughly 20 other new positions in other areas of the company.

“What's happened in the last eight years, and particularly during the last year, shows that Outdoor Research is on the move,” Lozner said. “We want people to know that. And how well our web site works, along with how effectively it tells our message, ties directly back to how effectively we are communicating with our customers. This new site is about making sure people are able to identify strongly with who we are, where we are going, and that it’s extremely easy to navigate the wide range of product Outdoor Research makes.”

Lozner said Gorilla, which is exceptionally skilled in development using Magento, was the ideal partner to help Outdoor Research achieve a number of new goals in the site:

  • Broadcast a strong brand identity tied to Outdoor Research’s roots as a company that innovates from experience in the field.
  • Provide better filter-based navigation to help customers search the product collection by sport, performance characteristics and other criteria.
  • Provide a platform that will support the ongoing development of foreign-language sites as Outdoor Research continues to grow in international markets.
  • Provide a much more extensive range of product details, technical data, and how-to information.
  • More thoroughly integrate social media throughout the site, including Outdoor Research’s Verticulture blog, Lab Rat product reviews and Facebook.
  • Help customers more easily locate the product they want to buy at retail partners.
  • Improve SEO.