Redesigning the Product Experience for Cat.com

CROSS-CHANNEL CHALLENGES

• Subsidiary sites shared a template and codebase- A shared template structure and code base was used by non-Cat.com subsidiary sites on the technology platform. The design needed to minimize disruption to these sites.
• Integrations with downstream systems needed to be modified - APIs and integrations with downstream systems (product feed, ecommerce, marketing automation, competitive product feed, virtual product tours, internal search, and more) needed to be changed.
• Some Dealer sites leveraged product feeds and templates  - Templates and product feed changes would impact select dealer sites, potentially requiring changes. Understanding the impact, communicating strategic intent, and providing consultation to help facilitate changes was needed.
• Non-product offerings on other sites needed to be integrated - Other important parts of the business, needed to be included in messaging, content, and at times linked to. For instance, in addition to featuring our new products, we also needed to highlight our rental and used options. Furthermore, our aftermarket product support, parts, and financing options were important parts of the products value story and desired focus.
• Both B2B vs. B2C products on other sites had to be connected- In addition to the core heavy equipment business, Cat also has other offerings which have independent experiences. For instance, Cat merchandise (like work boots) and retail products (like portable generators) were not included in the product catalog, but needed to be considered in the overall experience.

TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGES

• Significant UX and technical debt - The legacy platform would need refactoring due to years of accumulated technical debt.  Ad-hoc feature enhancements, custom code, and an outdated codebase made this more difficult.
• Limited data  connectivity and integration - Data across multiple sources needed to be connected, profiles needed to be created, and integration with technology needed to happen.
• Siloed technology teams with independent product releases. These systems had their own priorities, roadmaps and constraints.

CONTENT CHALLENGES

• Product taxonomies were not centrally governed – Central management of product taxonomies did not exist. The data was not clean, structured, consistent, or complete. Further, many cross-product relationships needed to be mapped out.
• Each business/ product group where in different stages of content readiness - Not all business units have the same level of content readiness. Because of time and/or budget constraints, they will not be able to develop content that fully maximizes the new design right away. Our design had to accommodate pages which would have no content changes AND those that decided to take advantage of new features.
• A new eCommerce conversion path had to be introduced – Some products were available for purchase online and had a very different user path. Instead of “Request a Quote” being the next best action, these users needed to be directed to the Commerce experience so that they could shop online. This required API integrations with the Commerce platform and a new strategy for integration.
• Care had to be taken to ensure that SEO was not disrupted – Not only did these pages attract the most amount of search traffic on the site, analysis showed that they dominated search across all competitive keywords. In part this was due to technical SEO enhancements and schema improvements over time on these pages. The design had to be implemented in a way that did not impact search rankings and equity.
• Each business/product group had varied content needs - Template had to account for different content needs across regions, product types, and industries. Logic needed to be built to support:
  • Light vs. heavy content
  • Marketing content vs. product specifications only vs. hybrid
  • Product classes with different content priorities / topics / formats
  • Regions different content needs