Our Work

Services Provided

Founded in 1981 by George and Molly Greene, The GEL Group started as a uniquely distinctive company that now has 10 offices in 4 states and more than 350 professionals working for it. Providing a wide range of analytical testing, environmental consulting, civil and geophysical engineering services unique to the industry, The GEL Group works closely with industry experts, developers, and government officials.

The GEL Group has grown to encompass three subsidiary companies: GEL Laboratories, GEL Engineering, GEL Solutions, and their affiliate company, Cape Fear Analytical. With its roots in such technical work, they wanted their website to reflect that same high level of expertise.

When they approached Hop Studios in May of 2023, their site was about a decade old and in dire need of modernizing. With too many pages and too many types of content, their site felt clunky and confusing. Little of it reflected the extensive experience and knowledge they had to offer. The GEL Group wanted to ensure its online appearance would properly reflect the advanced knowledge and abilities of its employees.

We eagerly took on the challenge of extensively revamping and redesigning their website. The main emphasis: A focus on reducing confusion and allowing visitors to more easily understand all of the many services offered. We wanted visitors to quickly find the proper match for their inquiry. This “simplify and improve” motto was our mantra in nearly every facet of the redesign.

The first step to modernizing a website is at the software level: Hop Studios upgraded the GEL Group site’s long-frozen-in-time content management system to ExpressionEngine version 7.

With many different companies working together on one site, there needed to be levels of access control so that each editor could clearly access and modify the site sections relevant to them. Without that, too many cooks in the kitchen would lead to a lot of confusing soup. Once we set up these member roles and permissions, we trained the GEL Group team in how to maintain the site and customize the control panel further so everyone could contribute to their specific sections without disturbing anyone else’s processes.

Once the team was set up for success, we turned our focus to the customer’s experience. Visitors need to quickly determine if the GEL Group could perform the service they’re looking for, and easily contact the right person about that service. The new homepage design simplifies navigation and makes this clear as a bell.

Previously, the search function didn’t allow visitors to easily find what they were looking for. Hop Studios improved the “Find a Service” feature, allowing users to search across all subsidiaries and services at once. No more frustrating searches that didn’t garner results!

The blog also got refreshed, and is now a more useful resource for information on services, new regulations, and interesting case studies from GEL Solutions and GEL Engineering.

It’s been an absolute pleasure to help modernize their site to a fresh, simplified user experience and with overall functionality boosts for both visitors and editors.