Cisco Partner Site Migration
A Compelling Web Experience for a Key Audience
We developed a future-facing web experience for partners on cisco.com so Cisco can market to partners like it markets to customers
- Content audit
- Information architecture
- Migration support & analysis
- UX recommendations
- Content and functionality requirements
- Content models
- Website copy
The Situation
Cisco's partners contribute 80% of the networking giant's revenue. But Partner Central, Cisco's digital home for partners, was bogged down by 57,000 files and depended on an old, inefficient—and therefore costly—CMS. The content needed to be drastically streamlined and migrated to cisco.com's spiffy new CMS.
Cisco's strategy, to shift from a product-centric to persona-centric UX and content approach, would enable and increase engagement between partner types, and create a logical, measurable user journey for this critical audience.
The Challenge
We needed to create a consistent, streamlined web experience that serves multiple partners (distributors, VARs, integrators, etc.) and different personas (sales, marketing, technical, business decision maker) with segmented messaging and tailored journeys. We also needed to shed tens of thousands of digital assets without leaving any valuable content behind—or stepping on any stakeholder toes.
The Approach
- Conducted research and stakeholder interviews
- Mapped partner-specific user journeys and page types
- Audited old site and scored assets on key criteria, including content type, age, quality, purpose, and audience; wrote new content
- Eliminated outdated files and duplicates; identified valuable content to migrate
Our audit spreadsheet became the "golden record" data-set. With a single source of truth, we could deep-dive into the data, zoom back out to big-picture perspectives, and tie decisions to larger goals.
The Result
After whittling down 57,000 assets to 500, we architected an optimized web experience where partners could make the most of their relationship with Cisco.
"We love working with you—you saved my (and the whole team’s) bacon on a regular basis. I can’t thank you enough."
—Senior Manager, Cisco Global Partner Marketing
