Heavy Steel, yet a Lighter Experience: Hyundai Steel’s Website Renewal
CLIENT
DATE
SERVICE
INDUSTRY
Hyundai Steel Company., Ltd
2024.07.01 - 2025.02.15
CXUX Consulting, Human-Centered Creative Design
Steel & Metal
Heavy Steel, yet a Lighter Experience: Hyundai Steel’s Website Renewal
CLIENT
DATE
SERVICE
INDUSTRY
Hyundai Steel Company., Ltd
2024.07.01 - 2025.02.15
CXUX Consulting, Human-Centered Creative Design
Steel & Metal
Hyundai Steel’s previous website faced challenges in effectively communicating product competitiveness and corporate activities in a rapidly evolving market. It also risked negatively impacting the company’s brand image. To address this, Hyundai Steel initiated a comprehensive redesign of its digital touchpoints in 2024. With deep expertise in B2B industries and Hyundai Motor Group, Saltcake redefined Hyundai Steel’s digital direction and led the strategic transformation. Through close collaboration with the client, we successfully launched the new corporate website in February 2025.
This redesign allows Hyundai Steel to better communicate its core philosophy of "Beyond Steel" while enhancing its brand presence and digital experience.
Hyundai Steel, Korea’s first steel manufacturer with a 70-year history, supplies essential steel products for automotive, construction, shipbuilding, and home appliances. The company leads in future mobility, low-carbon steel, and premium construction materials, holding the most World-Class Products in the steel sector. It continues to drive carbon neutrality, digital transformation, and business innovation as a global industry leader.
STRATEGY
Approach to B2B Websites
The newly redesigned Hyundai Steel corporate website begins with a powerful message: “Steel is the backbone of Korea’s industry.” This statement, originally delivered by Chung Ju-young, the visionary founder of Hyundai Group, encapsulates the company’s fundamental purpose and legacy. It is followed by key declarations from successive Hyundai Motor Group chairmen, reinforcing Hyundai Steel’s market position and strategic vision as the world’s first resource-circulating steel company and a global leader in automotive steel solutions.
For B2B enterprises, a corporate website must go beyond simple information delivery—it should be strategically designed to clearly communicate the company’s positioning and vision. Customers and stakeholders must immediately grasp the company’s core values and unique differentiators, and these elements should be seamlessly integrated into the overall CX (Customer Experience) and UX (User Experience) strategy.
To achieve this, Saltcake conducted an in-depth analysis of five core insights that form the foundation of Hyundai Steel’s CX and UX strategy. These insights guided the creation of a differentiated customer experience, ensuring a more engaging and strategic digital presence.
Key Insights for CX & UX Strategy in Corporate Websites (Saltcake, 2025)
CX/UX Innovation Beyond Competitors
For businesses operating in global markets, Gap Analysis through international benchmarking is a crucial part of CX/UX strategy development. By leveraging this approach, we assessed how Hyundai Steel’s information accessibility compares to global standards.
Steel manufacturers worldwide—including those in China, Japan, Europe, and the U.S.—are focusing on four key strategic themes to address intensifying competition and shifting market demand. These themes are prominently reflected in their corporate websites, highlighting their role in shaping industry trends and customer expectations.
Expansion of Global Market Presence
• Expansion of overseas demand markets
• Supply chain management
• Global M&A
Eco-Friendly Production System
• Development of carbon
neutrality technology
• Pollution control
• Resource recycling and
by-product utilization
Low-Carbon, High-Value Products
• Product branding
• Development of
high-performance products
Productivity Improvement & Management Innovation
• Digital transformation
• Improvement of
production facilities
2024 Key Management Issues of Global Steel Companies (Saltcake, 2024)
How is Hyundai Steel Adapting to Global Steel Industry Changes?
Hyundai Steel’s previous website struggled to adapt to evolving industry trends and customer needs, presenting two major challenges:
• Lack of alignment with key global trends
• Complex information architecture that hindered user navigation
These issues were particularly evident in the product information structure, making it difficult for visitors to access critical details.
Through Saltcake’s Competitor’s Benchmarking Analysis, we examined the World Steel Association’s (WSA) top seven steel manufacturers to identify best practices. Our findings revealed that:
• Competitors clearly categorize their product branding, product groups, and industry applications to enhance clarity.
• Many companies operate separate product information websites to better manage the complexity of steel products and improve customer engagement.
Key Product Information of Major Global Steel Companies (Saltcake, 2024)
Competitive Steel Companies’ UX Strategies & Product Information Structure (Saltcake, 2024)
Customer Journey-Centered Information Architecture Design
Saltcake’s approach to information architecture (IA) is deeply rooted in the customer journey, a methodology highly valued by our clients. While some may assume that IA should naturally be UX-driven, a strategic and holistic approach that prioritizes the customer journey results in a far more effective and impactful design. This approach is built on four key principles:
01
User-Centered
Navigation Structure
• Reduces the time customers spend searching for information on the website and enables easier discovery of relevant content
• Provides a more intuitive experience without complex navigation
02
Data-Driven Optimization
• Analyzes customer navigation paths and patterns to enable continuous improvements
• Simplifies the process of reaching specific products, content, and services, increasing conversion rates (e.g., business inquiries, downloads)
03
Shift Away from Organizational Structure
• Provides a user experience tailored to customer needs rather than internal corporate divisions, increasing convenience
• Enables content customization based on different user types
04
Adapting to Market Changes
• Allows customers to interact with the company (brand) in their preferred way, strengthening trust and loyalty
• Ensures timely integration of the latest B2B digital experiences
Customer Experience-Based Information Architecture Design: Expected Outcomes (Saltcake, 2025)
Since corporate websites serve as critical touchpoints for customer interaction, IA should not merely focus on navigation structures. Instead, it should be designed around the customer journey, with UX strategies shaping detailed screen structures.
To achieve this, we developed a Customer Experience Journey Map based on the AIDAS model (Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action, Satisfaction). This framework allowed us to analyze each user group’s Goals, User Behavior, Actions & Services, and Touchpoints—essentially mapping how users engage with the website’s key menus and services. This data-driven approach enabled us to create an optimized UX strategy and UI design framework.
Customer Experience Journey-Based IA Strategy (Saltcake, 2024): Hyundai Steel Corporate Website
By integrating this approach, Hyundai Steel’s website transformation serves as a strong example of how customer journey-focused IA leads to practical UX improvements. The redesigned website now incorporates several key structural enhancements that align with customer needs.
1. Optimized Product Discovery and Continuous Customer Journey
The website is designed to facilitate seamless product discovery and business support throughout the customer journey, strategically highlighting Hyundai Steel’s diverse product lineup.
Customer Experience Journey-Based IA Strategy: Product Discovery Journey and Connected CX Strategy
2. Designing a Digital Experience that Reflects Corporate Value Flow
Hyundai Steel’s information architecture is structured around sustainability, encompassing corporate philosophy, sustainable management, product and technological innovation, and customer trust-building. This framework illustrates how the company’s core values extend to its products, customers, and investors.
Digital Customer Experience Flow of Hyundai Steel’s Corporate Website (Saltcake, 2024)
3. Strengthening Initial Customer Experience with an Onboarding Hub
Corporate websites play a crucial role in various stages of the customer journey, especially in the early touchpoints of the Awareness and Consideration phases. Recognizing the significance of these stages, we aimed to enhance key touchpoints identified in the CXJ Map by introducing a Start Page, a sub-main page designed to serve as an onboarding hub.
This strategic approach offers three key advantages:
Direct Customer
Journey
Improved accessibility to
lower-level menus, related services, and content, allowing for a more seamless
customer experience
Streamlined
Main Page
The Start Page acts as a Sub Main Page, helping to distribute content and ensure a clean, intuitive main
page layout
Enhanced Search
Portal Traffic
Optimized for SEO, the Start Page serves as a Landing Page, improving search engine visibility and directing
users effectively
This onboarding hub ensures that new and returning visitors can quickly grasp Hyundai Steel’s offerings while seamlessly navigating through the digital experience
Hyundai Steel Redesign Strategy:
Hyperconnectivity Beyond Steel
The Hyundai Steel website redesign project embraces the company’s vision, “Engineering the Future Beyond Steel,” while introducing the concept of “Hyperconnectivity Beyond Steel.” This concept aims to interconnect key elements of the corporate website, enhancing the overall user experience through a customer journey-centered approach.
Hyperconnectivity Beyond Steel
단순한 기업정보 제공을 넘어 고객, 임직원,
이해관계자와의 유기적인 연결을 통한 지속 가능한 미래를 제시
Hyundai Steel Website Redesign Project Concept (Saltcake, 2024)
This approach is driven by three primary objectives and is supported by a series of well-defined strategies.
Hyundai Steel Corporate Website Core Strategies (Saltcake, 2024)
These strategies have been actively incorporated into UX planning, including high-fidelity UI wireframes for product information and 3D video content that illustrates the boundless potential of steel.
High-Fid UI Wireframe: Product Information
Conti: Main Page Key Visual Movie
Hyundai Steel UX Design:
Breaking Stereotypes in the Steel Industry
Steel is a fundamental material that ranges from industrial raw materials to high-tech components for future mobility. Its properties vary from heavy and rigid to light and flexible, making it essential across multiple industries. However, as one of the largest carbon-emitting industries, steel production is undergoing a significant technological transformation, with substantial investments in carbon neutrality research, including the development of hydrogen-reduced iron and next-generation production systems.
Hyundai Steel, with its integrated steel mill and resource-circulating production system, plays a critical role in the automotive, construction, and shipbuilding sectors within Hyundai Motor Group. The company envisions unlocking the limitless potential of steel as a material. However, its previous corporate website failed to visually communicate this vision.
Traditionally, steel companies operate as large-scale manufacturing industries, and their corporate websites often reflect this through heavy, rigid, and uninspiring UX design. Many lack a clear brand identity, making them feel overly technical and disconnected.
ArcelorMittal
Nucor
Nippon Steel
Major Global Steel Companies’ Corporate Websites: Main Page & Product Information Page
Hyundai Steel’s UX design aims to challenge these stereotypes by integrating its corporate identity into a compelling content narrative, elevating brand perception, and making steel more approachable in the digital space.
This section introduces the core UX design concepts and key UX/UI features that illustrate this transformation.
1. Main Page
Synopsis
Various objects’ shapes, textures, material properties, and dynamic movements interact harmoniously, creating a sense of balance and fusion. This visual composition showcases the versatility and innovation of steel, transcending its traditional boundaries.
By visually orchestrating these elements, the animation amplifies immersion, illustrating Hyundai Steel’s vision for the future beyond the material limitations of steel.
Visual Keywords
Main Page KV 3D Animation Concept
2. Product Information
In this project, the product introduction pages required the most time and effort in UX planning, as they were designed with a customer journey-centered content structure and a narrative engagement strategy.
A key focus was on enhancing the product overview section at the beginning of each product introduction, ensuring that visitors can quickly grasp the product’s key features and understand why Hyundai Steel is the right choice.
Product Tagline
Directly conveys product features and value
Customer Benefit Message
Communicates tangible benefits and user experience of the product
Basic Information
Introduces core characteristics, applicable industries, and Hyundai Steel’s differentiation
Key Competitive Advantage
Concisely delivers Hyundai Steel’s market advantages and strengths
1. Product Tagline
Directly conveys product features and value
2. Customer Benefit Message
Communicates tangible benefits and user experience of the product
3. Basic Information
Introduces core characteristics, applicable industries, and Hyundai Steel’s differentiation
4. Key Competitive Advantage
Concisely delivers Hyundai Steel’s market advantages and strengths
3. Carbon Neutrality, R&D
Carbon neutrality technology and R&D are the core driving forces that materialize Hy undai Steel’s future vision and enhance its corporate competitiveness. To effectively convey this message, a content narrative strategy has been designed, connecting empathy, sharing, and factual dissemination. Various media formats such as videos, charts, infographics, and on-site photographs are utilized to ensure clarity and ease of understanding.
Building Empathy
with Customers
Background and Objectives
Creating Expectations
through Concrete
Implementation Plans
Roadmap, Core Strategies
Establishing Trust through
Objective Outcomes
Key Technologies, Achievements
4. Hyundai Steel Story
Many corporate websites traditionally present their identity through separate sections such as company overview, CEO messages, management philosophy, and vision. However, Hyundai Steel has taken a more intuitive and immersive approach by introducing the “Hyundai Steel Story” section, allowing users to grasp the brand’s core values and direction at a glance.
Serving as a digital prologue that connects the past, present, and future of Hyundai Steel, this section begins with statements from successive Hyundai Motor Group chairmen, defining the fundamental purpose of the company. Through storytelling, it conveys the core values and identity that Hyundai Steel continuously pursues. Key themes such as sustainable growth, innovation, carbon neutrality, and global leadership are strategically integrated to illustrate how Hyundai Steel is shaping its future.
Enhancing Hyundai Steel’s Digital Branding through CX/UX Innovation
The Hyundai Steel website renewal project extended beyond the corporate website to include a comprehensive revamp of various related platforms. These included the Hyundai Steel media room “moment”, built around the concept of “Capturing Hyundai Steel!”, as well as the Cyber Audit Office, Hyundai Steel Women’s Football Team “Red Angels,” and Hyundai Steel Men’s Archery Team websites.
Throughout the project, Saltcake received high praise and satisfaction from the client for its CX/UX consulting expertise and creative UX design. By enhancing Hyundai Steel’s digital platforms as a whole, we gained deeper insights into common challenges faced by B2B enterprises and developed more structured approaches to solving them.
This project provided Saltcake with an opportunity to refine methodologies and solutions for B2B customer experience innovation. Moving forward, we remain committed to leading digital transformation across diverse industries with differentiated CX/UX strategies.
CREATIVE STRATEGY
Breaking the Mold of Steel: A UX Design Concept that Defies Expectations
Hyundai Steel’s digital experience was built on bold expression, flexible structure, and clear communication.
By combining dynamic 3D graphics, diverse layouts, and typography that reflects information hierarchy, the new website delivers the company’s vision of innovation, diversity, and sustainability in an intuitive and immersive way.
Dynamic 3D Graphics that Shape the Future
Striking and intuitive 3D objects boldly express Hyundai Steel’s brand values.
This vivid visual approach enhances user immersion, while powerfully communicating the company’s forward-looking vision for the future of the steel industry.
Visually Fluid Layouts that Embrace Flexibility
A variety of visual forms are strategically employed to express both the global diversity of Hyundai Steel and the inherent flexibility of steel as a material. The fluid layout structure enhances visual engagement and creates an intuitive yet immersive experience, sustaining user interest throughout the journey.
Icon Design that Balances Expertise and Clarity
Hyundai Steel’s product catalogs were designed to simplify complex industrial information without compromising on professionalism.
Custom-designed booklets visually communicate the company’s advanced technology and the value of its products at a glance.
Intuitive layouts and a clear information structure ensure a balance between technical depth and readability. Sleek graphics and precise typography convey a sense of innovation and trust, allowing users to find the information they need quickly and confidently. More than just printed materials, these catalogs function as communication tools that embody Hyundai Steel’s philosophy and technological strength—designed to resonate not only with industry professionals, but also with a broader audience.
A New Visual Experience that Embodies Change and Energy
To move beyond the conservative, conventional image of the steel industry, Hyundai Steel introduced a new KV identity through a dynamic brand film. The video expresses the brand’s commitment to innovation and flexibility, offering a fresh visual narrative for the future of steel.
3D objects shift and move fluidly across space—transforming shape, bouncing with energy, and displaying vibrant variations in size and color.
These ever-changing forms symbolize Hyundai Steel’s limitless potential and creativity. Rich, immersive graphics emphasize the scale and ambition of the brand, delivering a visual experience that is both bold and captivating. More than a film, this is a declaration: Hyundai Steel is not just about raw material—it’s a medium of innovation, reshaping the future of the industry with flexibility and vision.
Possibility of Change
Movement in Figure
Structured geometric forms express Hyundai Steel’s strength and stability beyond conventional layouts.
Sleek and Modern
A fresh visual approach reinterprets steel with vibrant colors and forms, breaking from traditional heaviness.
Bold 3D
Graphic
Bold 3D Graphic
Realistic 3D graphics enhance spatial depth, symbolizing Hyundai Steel’s dynamic and multidimensional future.
Hyundai Steel Key Visual Video Concept: Hyundai Steel Company Homepage
Organically Connected Visual Identity
The recurring 3D objects serve as more than decorative elements—they embody Hyundai Steel’s core values. These visuals were strategically restructured across sub key visuals to maintain a consistent tone and create seamless visual cohesion throughout the site.
Each object symbolizes innovation and flexibility in the steel industry, transforming abstract concepts into tangible, futuristic forms. Naturally integrated across pages, they guide users through an intuitive and immersive brand narrative.
Company
A trio of bold shapes and RGB-based colors visualize Hyundai Steel’s adaptability in a fast-changing digital era, while embodying CEO Seoganghyun’s three key messages for 2025.
Strengthening a profit-centered business structure
(Color of the rising profit curve = Red)
Enhancing the efficiency of carbon neutrality implementation
(Essential color for environmental responsibility = Green)
Securing a foundation for future growth
(Color of the future and hope = Blue)
Strengthening a profit-centered business structure
(Color of the rising profit curve = Red)
Enhancing the efficiency of carbon neutrality implementation
(Essential color for environmental responsibility = Green)
Securing a foundation for future growth
(Color of the future and hope = Blue)
Sustainability
By combining objects symbolizing circulation and regeneration with warm-toned colors, we reflected Hyundai Steel’s sustainable momentum and the recyclable value of its products, emphasizing the company’s environmental contributions.
Circulation =
Regeneration (Elasticity) =
Product/Tech
We visualized Hyundai Steel’s advanced production process—transforming raw materials through blast and electric furnaces—into products that can take on diverse, precise forms.
Raw material =
Blast furnace =
Electric furnace =
Various forms of steel / Steel in diverse forms =
Sustainability
By combining objects symbolizing circulation and regeneration with warm-toned colors, we reflected Hyundai Steel’s sustainable momentum and the recyclable value of its products, emphasizing the company’s environmental contributions.
Circulation =
Regeneration (Elasticity) =
Product/Tech
We visualized Hyundai Steel’s advanced production process—transforming raw materials through blast and electric furnaces—into products that can take on diverse, precise forms.
Raw material =
Electric furnace =
Blast furnace =
IR
To express balance and harmony, which are essential in investment, we used symmetrical and well-balanced objects to represent Hyundai Steel’s stable and growing presence.
Balance =
Symmetry =
Support
Flexible objects were used to represent Hyundai Steel’s agile and multifaceted customer response, while precise, uniform screw elements symbolized tailored solutions through constant adjustment and improvement.
Multifaceted and flexible customer response =
Adjustment / Improvement =
IR
To express balance and harmony, which are essential in investment, we used symmetrical and well-balanced objects to represent Hyundai Steel’s stable and growing presence.
Balance =
Symmetry =
Support
Flexible objects were used to represent Hyundai Steel’s agile and multifaceted customer response, while precise, uniform screw elements symbolized tailored solutions through constant adjustment and improvement.
Multifaceted and flexible customer response =
Adjustment / Improvement =
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