Situation
Approximately 30% of Cat.com pages are focused on the unique needs customers within specific industry groups. This evergreen content is intended to deliver thought leadership, case studies, and helpful information to customers that are in the early-to-middle stages of their journey. The ultimate goal of this content is to transition these users to product pages and/or dealers to take the next step.
Over time, industry groups have added content to this section, often with no standards and limited guidance on how to create cohesive sub-site experiences within Cat.com. This has created several challenges.
Key Industry Solutions Challenges
Information architecture
Some industry groups may have 100s of pages, but they are not connected in a meaningful way. There are two causes of this: 1) the site is missing important web functionality, like secondary navigation and content tagging capabilities. 2) The content is sometimes published with inconsistent or non-existing links to other related content.
Content
Some industry experiences are missing critical pieces of content based on needs revealed in customer journey map analysis. At times, they are missing content for a given stage of the journey. Other times, their content strategy lacks depth, not addressing specific customer sub-segments and/or topics.
Conversions
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 do not have a primary call-to-action, have too many CTAs, or have hidden CTAs.
Consistency
Pages do not always share the same look and feel, even though they are targeted at the same customer segment. These consistency challenges are magnified across regions. By region the experience, type of content, and messaging can vary drastically.
Brand integration
Within some industry experiences, the corporate brand is not well-integrated. In addition, some industry experiences don’t do a great job of articulating the value story of the industry or related product line. Further, offerings like aftermarket parts, product support, and financing are missing, even though these are important factors in a customer’s decision-making process.
Product evolution
Products lines are evolving. Technology has become a critical part of the product mix. Products, services, and technologies are converging to create new offerings. This adds more complexity to how customers learn, shop, and buy.
Overlapping products
Some products cross multiple industry groups, however, there is little connection between the groups on the site. This means that users may miss opportunities to engage with related content.
Actions
1
I developed an industry solutions strategy that could be leveraged by all industry and product groups, customer segments, and regions. This included experience principles, sitemaps, and best practices.
2
I designed new page templates and components, which would support the new strategy. With these new elements, the goal was to create consistency across all industry experiences, while also making content creation easier.
3
I developed content strategy training to help marketers and content authors understand the new framework. With the new templates and components in place, content marketers could focus on developing a strong content strategy and rich content, while letting the technology manage the rest.
Result
Before I left Caterpillar, I transitioned this project to strategy and development team members. Work to transform the Industry Solutions section of Cat.com is still underway.
Throughout the process, I also shared the approach with key business partners. They have incorporated much of the ideology into their current content marketing processes, in preparation for the completion of development work.