Improving Sitecore’s sales funnel while delivering a full site refresh

More than just a CMS, Sitecore provides the technology and solutions that allow their 3000+ customers to manage and deliver content across multiple channels.

As a technology company it’s imperative they have a site conveying their level of expertise and technical know-how. I worked with Hugo & Cat to deliver a full site refresh that introduced their new brand and was built around visually conveying the concept of Sitecore as the power underlaying the web – all while improving the user experience and delivering in time to go live for their annual Symposium just four months later.

Sitecore's Product and services page

A view of the mobile experience for the product and services listing page

Testing showed Sitecore's product and services listing page wasn't bringing clarity to their offering

Sitecore’s PLP was suffering from some issues common to large established technology companies — their product offering has grown in breadth and complexity and can be impenetrable to a new customer. Uncertainty was reducing user's progression through the sales journey.

Here's some of the improvements made when redesigning the listing page:

• Restructured the page layout so products were grouped by use case making them easier to find and compare.
• Used descriptive headings for products instead of the acronym based names to make them clearer to new customers.
• Moved out of date versions behind a toggle to reduce confusion with the current and similarly named products – while still allowing access for users yet to upgrade.
• Turned products into cards to give them a sense of tangibility and introduced hierarchy so user’s could be directed to the core offerings.
• We introduced an eCommerce style ‘quick view’ panel to provide more detailed information before requiring users to commit to navigating away.

New case study page

Bringing more details above the fold created a project snapshot and better wayfinding to relevant products

Sitecore's 300+ case study pages are a key step in the user journey but the design wasn’t catering to the audiences.

Sitecore's case studies provide great insights to developers on how the configurability and application of the products as well as being a useful sales tool for communicating to high-level customer stake holders. However the existing design required a user to delve into the long form text to pull out relevant information.

Here’s some of the changes made to the page:

• Imagery was moved down the page to allow more room in the header for high level details that reassured the user of the case's relevance to them.
• Details in the header linked to relevant products to reduce sales funnel friction.
• Stylised typography made up for the relocated imagery and branded the experience.
• Awards and highlights were made more prominent to reassure user's of noteworthy case studies.
• An ‘impact’ module with statistics that allowed users to quickly get a view of the case studies outcomes without having to read the full page.

Sitecore design system

Example of the design system documentation for a component

Tight timelines required a pragmatic approach and an effective design system

The client required the redesigned site go live in time for their annual symposium where they intended to launch their refreshed brand — but this mean that development had to be complete just two weeks after the final design sprint.

To give the developers the best chance of delivering on time a thorough design system was a key deliverable for the design team.

Designs were also provided in a pragmatic two stage approach. ‘Day-one’ design that could be built with already completed components or minimal changes while still meeting user needs and a future state that provided a richer or more bespoke experience for when time allowed.