Notes by Alice
中 / EN

One-Line Summary

Built a B2B international website for a smart home tech brand in roughly one month to support an overseas trade show. The project spanned product understanding, site architecture, English copywriting, brand visual application, AI-generated images and animations, and WordPress development. A later redesign for multilingual and operational needs carried forward the content direction, business communication logic, and brand visual foundation established here.

Background

This project started with an overseas trade show deadline.

The company was preparing to exhibit in Japan and needed an English-language website — fast. International visitors needed to quickly understand the brand, the product direction, and what a potential partnership might look like.

When the project began, internal product knowledge and business direction existed, but nothing had been shaped into website content yet. Product information was scattered across internal documentation, sales needs, and past partnership experience. Someone needed to absorb it and turn it into something communicable to an outside audience.

The site had a clear job from the start: support business conversations at the trade show, and give international visitors somewhere to go afterward to understand the company’s technical capabilities and partnership potential.

After getting the product direction and business requirements, I began planning the site architecture, writing the English content, and building out the pages — launching in about a month.

My Role

This was largely a solo project, built from scratch.

My responsibilities included:

  • Quickly understanding the product positioning, technical characteristics, and commercial applications from internal documentation
  • Planning the site’s communication priorities based on overseas exhibition and international business needs
  • Building the information architecture and defining the main page directions
  • Writing all English website copy
  • Extending the existing brand guideline into the website’s visual presentation
  • Using AI tools to generate images and animation assets
  • Building the site in WordPress
  • Adjusting layout, section order, CTAs, and contact forms
  • Getting the site live in roughly one month to support the trade show

The project required handling strategy, content, brand application, and production simultaneously. Every step — from understanding the product to shipping the site — required independent prioritization, with the constraint that it had to actually be usable by the deadline.

Core Challenges

The pressure came from two places: a tight timeline, and information that wasn’t fully formed yet.

There was no existing international site architecture to build from, and no complete content brief. The product itself was a technical solution — just translating internal materials into English would have made for a site international customers couldn’t quickly parse.

So I started by clarifying a few things:

  • Who is this site primarily for?
  • What needs to be communicated clearly in a trade show context?
  • What information builds credibility with international clients?
  • What content supports follow-up business conversations?
  • What kind of brand feeling should the site carry overall?

With those questions answered, I could begin laying out the architecture, copy, and page approach.

How I Approached It

I positioned the site as the first point of understanding for overseas B2B visitors.

For content structure, I built in a reading path: establish the brand and product direction first, then extend into technical credibility, use cases, and a contact pathway. That flow fits a trade show context and gives salespeople something coherent to reference.

For site architecture, I organized information into clear layers: brand introduction, product and technical direction, application scenarios, partnership possibilities, and a contact point. Each page needed a clear job — not just a pile of information.

For the English copy, I avoided overly technical language in favor of phrasing that international B2B readers could grasp quickly — letting the product value, partnership scenarios, and technical credibility land without requiring deep background knowledge.

For production, I used WordPress to build the pages quickly, and AI tools to generate visual assets. Without a full design or media budget, these tools helped me get the visuals up to speed fast enough to hit the launch date.

The most important thing throughout wasn’t any single tool — it was being able to judge what content, imagery, and communication pacing the site needed, and then executing within the time available.

Brand Visual Application and Asset Production

The visual direction came from extending the existing brand guideline.

I’m not a dedicated designer, but this project required me to take an existing brand identity and apply it to a complete website. That meant working through color, graphic vocabulary, whitespace, section proportions, image choices, and overall visual rhythm.

Brand guidelines can look clear on paper but go wrong quickly once you’re actually building pages. The colors might be right but the overall feel is off; the elements are all there but the pages don’t read as the same brand.

So I paid close attention to a few things:

  • Extending the existing brand identity rather than inventing a new visual language
  • Controlling how much decoration was on the page
  • Using tech-oriented imagery to serve the content, not distract from it
  • Using whitespace and section pacing to make complex information easier to read
  • Generating images and animation assets with AI tools, then filtering and adjusting them against the brand tone

AI tools played an accelerator role here. They helped me fill the visual gap quickly — but what mattered was knowing which assets fit the brand, which would pull the page off-course, and where each one belonged.

This project reinforced something: applying a brand visually isn’t just “following the guideline.” It requires understanding the original design logic well enough to extend it consistently into a new medium.

What Came Next

The site launched in about a month and was used to support the trade show.

About six months later, the company needed a more formally operated site — one that could handle multiple languages and ongoing content needs. Other team members coordinated with an external vendor on a redesign. The new version was rebuilt from scratch by an outside team, but it carried forward what this version had established:

  • A B2B-oriented communication approach
  • The English copy and main content architecture
  • The partnership entry points and business communication logic
  • How the existing brand visual identity translated to a website
  • The use of AI-generated tech imagery as part of the visual language

That continuity meant the project didn’t stop at the trade show. It became the foundation the later, more permanent version was built on.

Outcomes

The main outcomes from this project:

  • B2B international website live in roughly one month
  • Site architecture and English content built from zero
  • Internal product information translated into outward-facing website language
  • Brand credibility and technical image strengthened for international business
  • Full website visual extended from the existing brand guideline
  • AI-generated imagery and animations used to meet visual needs without a full design budget
  • WordPress site fully built and launched
  • Trade show business communications supported
  • Content direction and visual foundation carried forward into the formal redesign

What this project represents, more than the deliverables, is the ability to move independently in an ambiguous situation — when requirements weren’t fully written up, timelines were tight, and every decision had to be made without waiting for more information to arrive.

What I Learned

This project confirmed something about how I work: the core skill isn’t copywriting or website building. It’s being able to rapidly make sense of a problem in an unclear situation, and turn that understanding into something usable.

That requires both execution and judgment:

  • What information should come first?
  • What content builds trust?
  • What framing supports a sales conversation?
  • How do you extend a brand visual system consistently?
  • With limited time, what has to ship now, and what can be iterated later?

Those calls are what let the site go from nothing to live. And they’re what gave the later redesign somewhere concrete to start from.