In the beginning of 2019, IBM had 7 Strategic Partners, but no platform to consolidate information on its core capabilities with those entities. Partner pages were scattered across the IBM domain, and many did not have an offering page at all. As the digital strategist and web product manager, it was my goal to propose and build a central ecosystem where a list of the Strategic Partners could be found.
Pre-existing digital presence analysis
As mentioned above, some Strategic Partners and their capabilities with IBM could be found on domain. Before kicking off the project, I created a spreadsheet of these pages and asked the following questions:
- Were they regularly updated?
- Were they tied to a campaign and paid media?
- Did they align to the messaging key partnership stakeholders were going to market with?
- Should they be back links in the overarching landing page?
Competitor Analysis
Competitors such as Accenture and Deloitte had spaces on their domain to showcase business partners. If IBM’s goal was to advance on our competition, I needed to analyze the landscape so we could advise the website’s messaging and content.
Roadmapping
In the beginning of the project, I developed a project roadmap that aligned to the agile nature of the web team. Initially, working with several external stakeholders to sign off on copy and design flawed the workflow, but was improved upon through mentorship and sprint retrospectives.
Content and Copy
Before we could begin on the wire frames, content needed to be 3/4 baked. Product marketers discussed content relentlessly with partnership stakeholders until all were happy. Because the content within each partnership varies, our SEO tactics were limited to only a few branded keywords being: IBM strategic partnership, IBM alliances, IBM strategic alliances, etc. We prioritized avoiding cannibalization of revenue generating pages that depended on traffic from branded keywords such as “IBM and SAP”, “IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein”, etc. The new landing page ranks on page 1 for registered keywords and drives 33% of page traffic.
Wire Frame to Design comps to YTD Webpage
