Situation
In 2017, Cat.com hosted over 30,000 pages of evergreen content aimed at providing thought leadership, case studies, and helpful information to customers in various stages of their journey. However, the addition of content by different industry groups without guidance led to weak information architecture, missing content, inconsistent user experience, and poor brand alignment. My goal was to develop a UX strategy that could be leveraged by all groups, segments, and regions.
Challenges
Over time, industry groups added content to the site without any standards or guidance on how to create cohesive industry sub-site experiences within Cat.com. This resulted in several challenges, including the following:
- Weak information architecture: Industry groups had hundreds of pages within their sub-sections, but the pages were not meaningfully connected. This was due to the platform’s lack of secondary navigation and content tagging capabilities. Additionally, some groups lacked a strong information architecture or content strategy.
- Missing Content: The goal of each sub-experience was to provide customers with content that served all stages of their journey. However, in many industry experiences, critical pieces of content were missing. At times, the content that was present performed poorly.
- Missing Conversion Opportunities: The pages within industry experiences do not always work together as a system to encourage users to take the next steps in their journey. Many pages lack a primary call-to-action, have too many CTAs, or weak CTAs.
- Lack of Consistency: Pages targeting the same customer segment did not always share the same look and feel. These consistency challenges are magnified across regions, where the experience, type of content, and messaging varied drastically.
- Poor brand alignment: In certain industries, elements of the corporate brand was not well-integrated. Additionally, some industry experiences fail to clearly communicate the value story of the industry or related product line.
Actions
- Industry Solutions Strategy: Developed a comprehensive industry solutions strategy to be used by all industry and product groups, customer segments, and regions. This included experience principles, sitemaps, and best practices.
- New Page Templates and Components: Designed new page templates and components to support the new strategy, aiming to create consistency across all industry experiences and streamline content creation.
- Content Strategy Training: Developed and conducted content strategy training for marketers and content authors, helping them understand the new framework. This allowed them to focus on creating strong content while the technology handled the rest.
Results
This initiative not only addressed the immediate challenges but also laid a foundation for future enhancements. Results include:
- Improved Information Architecture: Established a strong information architecture with meaningful connections between pages, enhanced by secondary navigation and content tagging capabilities.
- Comprehensive Content: Ensured that industry sub-sections contained content for all stages of the customer journey, filling in critical gaps and improving content performance.
- Enhanced Conversion Opportunities: Created cohesive systems within industry experiences to encourage users to take the next steps in their journey, with optimized calls-to-action (CTAs).
- Consistent User Experience: Achieved a consistent look and feel across pages targeting the same customer segments, improving the user experience across different regions.
- Stronger Brand Alignment: Integrated corporate brand elements into industry experiences, clearly communicating the value story of each industry and related product line.
Before my departure from Caterpillar, I transitioned this project to strategy and development team members. The work to transform the Industry Solutions section of Cat.com is ongoing. Additionally, key business partners have adopted much of the new strategy into their current content marketing processes, preparing for the completion of development work.