Primary Efforts

Requirements Gathering, Information Design, Interface Design, Prototype Development and Testing, Template Development

The Challenge

Publishing of product homepages was a haphazard affair, and seemed a last minute consideration prior to a product’s release. The type and quality of information available to users varied greatly by product, business unit and region. In addition users frequently e-mailed Symantec’s webmaster to complain that they could not find basic information about a product - such as system requirements, price or availablity.

The Process

I consulted with key stakeholders (product managers, marketing managers and other product publishers) to establish a baseline for product information suitable for the Web site and it’s availablity prior to release. I conducted a competitive analysis of similar software product pages in order to determine industry standards and best practises.

In addition, I added an on-line survey to each of different product pages to establish the reason Web site users had come to the product pages, the type of information they had come there to find, and asked them to rate their level of satisfaction with the information they had found. Interestingly, much of the information that users indicated was unavailable (support, price or availablity) existed else where on the site, though obvious was difficult for users to locate. It also became clear that the product pages were being used for both pre and post purchase support.

The Solution

With the stakeholders it was determined that the product related content for the Web site was to be drawn from standard marketing generated documents (such as a product briefs or QuickStart quides) so that the type and quality of content would remain consistent for each product. In addition, these documents were more readily available in localized languages ensuring that regional publishers had access to the same content.

After the product information baseline was established a standard set of high level navigation sections was created, with secondary content links grouped within each of these sections. This navigation scheme was then tested with end users to ensure that the naming and grouping were intuitive.

Links to information which users had indicated they could not easily find were added to relevant navigation sections. For the first time users could buy the product from the product page, download product updates directly or access specific technical support for the product.

A site template was establish which indicated to publishers how and where information was to be presented. Because of this all of the product pages were structurally consistent meaning that repeat users were more likely to find what it was they were looking for, which in turn increased customer satisfaction. Product branding was used more prominantly in order to improve product messaging and in order to help users differentiate between different product pages.