Tag Archives: UX

Content Strategy, Experience-Design

Taking Charge of AMEX Corporate Card Programs

 

BSF
Early design comp of solution finder
Corporate Payment Services Solutions Finder

Challenge:

American Express(R) is known for its iconic charge cards but few knew that the world’s largest card issuer provided more than cards. The Corporate Card division of American Express introduced several new and complex products  and services as a way of growing its relationships with enterprise and mid-sized clients.

American Express Corporate Cards needed a way to explain and grow adoption of its Supplier Payments Solutions.

Strategy:

American Express cards are recognized by all and their value proposition is fairly simple–we’re not the cheapest or the easiest to get but rich rewards (e.g. travel points, priority access to event tickets, and status) accrue to our card members.

Our Approach: Leverage the recognizability and reputation of the cards to introduce and grow adoption of new products and services and make the rewards of adding these new products and services as simple to understand as American Express’ other rewards.

My Role in The Solution:

I developed a “Business Solution Finder”, a simple interactive tool that focused on WHY customers might need one or more of AMEX’s Supplier Payment Solutions not describing WHAT the solutions were. The tool is part of the business.americanexpress.com website.

I developed the questions and workflow and then designed the experience: The customer identifies their business need and answers a few questions about their business to reveal the solutions that can meet their needs.

I also developed the interaction flows, initial prototype (see below), wrote all copy, and provided creative direction to the visual designers who designed final images, icons, and other assets.

 

Workflow
Select Business Needs
Revenue Question
Dining & Entertainment Question
Travel Question
Recommendations
Contact Form

Results:

AMEX significantly grew adoption of its Supplier Payment Solutions.

Content Strategy, Creative Direction, Experience-Design

Putting the X-Factor In XMatters

XMatters homepage
Why XMatters page
IT Communications page
Proactive Communications Solutions page
XMatters Community homepage

Challenge: 

XMatters creates “Relevance Engines” that deliver relevant information about business interruptions, disasters, ad community alerts to individuals and group audiences based on their geographic location, job group, availability, channel preferences, and other key factors.

Their Relevance Engines have myriad uses for organizations across industries. However, XMatters needed to clarify their offering in order to grow their customer base and increase value to existing customers.

Strategy: 

There are few industries and few professions that couldn’t put XMatters to use but we needed to start with their Super Fans and Early Adopters–groups for whom the use cases were apparent and the success metrics and stories were easy to share.

We also needed a simple way to share the learnings of XMatters’ existing customers, Super Fans, and Early Adopters–and to leverage this to grow value with new and existing customers.

This was the basis of our content strategy for the XMatters website and the online community.

We ultimately delivered…

  • A redesigned website with completely new messaging and content that was targeted to Super Fan/Early Adopters and easy for like audiences to understand;
  • An elegant UI, taxonomy, and ontology that made the information easy to discover–and “breadcrumbed” site visitors to contact XMatters; and
  • An integrated community that allowed current and prospective customers to share their XMatters knowledge and experience.

My Role In The Solution:

I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…

  • Developing the initial design concepts (sketches) for the new visual design
  • Leading visual and UX designers to design a new visual design, information architecture and interface.
  • Developing the content strategy for the redesigned website and community
  • Writing copy and managing copywriters, designers, and HTML developers who produced content for the site
  • Providing creative direction for the website and community
  • Developing IA and UX for the website and community

Results: 

Increase in the percentage of website visitors who engage with video and other interactive content and who complete a lead form (demo, contact sales, request info). Growth in number and percentage of website visitors who join the XMatters community. Lower percentage of level one questions being escalated to higher level support.

Content Strategy, Experience-Design

A Portfolio Approach To Contented Customers With Kendall Jackson

 

JFE Brands Marketing Mix
JFE Content Matrix
JFE Content Matrix 2
JFE Content Matrix 3
JFE Functional Matrix
Murphy Goode Content Strategy
Murphy Goode Audiences
Murphy Goode Audience Attributes
Murphy Goode Primary Audience Profile
Murphy Goode Audience Behnaviors
Murphy Goode Audience Wine Consumption
Murphy Goode Content Strategy
Murphy Goode Content Recos By Page
Murphy Goode Content Recos By Page
Murphy Goode Content Recos By Page

Challenge:

Kendall Jackson, or Jackson Family Enterprises (JFE), owns and distributes award-winning wines from vineyards large and small. JFE takes a portfolio approach to managing their many wines, allowing each brand to stand alone and to establish its own customer base and reputation while leveraging their distribution network.

Operating as separate businesses and brands works well in terms of selling in the aisles of grocery stores, and at restaurants, bars, and wine stores. But, noting their success at leveraging shared customer relationships and distribution, JFE sought a similar solution for managing their owned and licensed content across all of the web properties for all of the wines in their portfolio.

Strategy:

JFE owned many valuable content assets and had invested in developing online properties, features, and functionality for some of the web properties they owned but had not leveraged those investments across all properties.

Our approach: Inventory and evaluate all content assets; assess their relevance/appropriateness for all wine brands, their audiences, and all JFE web properties; and identify and configure a CMS to make sharing assets across properties possible.

The content strategy was built upon two guiding principles:

  1. Each JFE brand must retain its own unique branding and continue to appeal to its core audience
  2. We can leverage owned and licensed assets, content, features, and functionality across all web properties

We ultimately created a map of all assets, content, features and functionality and used it to develop content strategies for each of JFE’s websites, starting with one of the company’s most accessible wines–millennial-targeted Murphy Goode.

 

Murphy Goode homepage
Murphy Goode Lifestyle content
Murphy Goode Eats
Murphy Goode Wines

My Role In The Solution:

I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…

  • Developing the content strategy
  • Writing copy and managing copywriters, designers, and HTML developers who produced content for the sites
  • Developing a taxonomy and ontology for the content
  • Conducting audience and market research
  • Developing customer personae
  • Devising a tagging strategy for the Sitecore CMS

Results:

Improved efficiency and increased ROI on assets and systems.