Case Study

Pragmatic Marketing

Information Architecture, Visual Redesign, Plone CMS Implementation, Site Search, Web Analytics, Blogs Integration

The Client

Pragmatic Marketing (PM) is a recognized industry leader in training for technology product marketing and management. The Pragmatic Framework, a commonsense, market-driven approach for marketing and management implementation, has been instituted, tested, and proven in hundreds of technology companies.

The Challenge

PM sought a redesign and development of their website to provide ease of use for site visitors, ease of management for site content editors, and to create a premier community for successful marketing. The site needed to support a community of marketing professionals with multiple levels of access to information, data, training opportunities, and an e-commerce solution to sell event registrations and products. PM requested a robust search capability for visitors. There was to be no re-branding but a stronger, more contemporary visual design that supported a strong and growing presence in the marketplace.

The Solutions

Visual Design

QI worked with PM to update the visual look and feel of the site without compromising the existing brand, particularly paying attention to legacy graphics that supported the brand identity. Layout, look, feel and images were updated to reflect the current organizational culture and support new marketing directions for the company.

Information Architecture & User Interface

The information architecture and user interface required a complete re-design to improve site navigation and ease of use by visitors and clients. After several rounds of user and business requirements gathering and analysis, Quinn Interactive (QI) helped PM come up with a user-friendly and intuitive site structure and navigation for their new site based on visitor goals. The new structure was much more intuitive and efficient than the original, making finding content fast and easy.

Content Management System

During site-requirements gathering it was determined that the open-source Plone content management system (CMS) would be the most appropriate platform for the capabilities that PM desired for their site. One important factor driving the CMS decision was the rich set of community tools that come with Plone, such as commenting, blogs, membership, events, and news.

Search Solutions

Plone includes a powerful and flexible search tool that required only a small amount of QI custom programming.

Site Analytics

QI and PM selected Google Analytics as a cost-effective, robust solution for analyzing site traffic and customer behavior on the site.

Training

QI created targeted training for administrators and managers for each of the applications constituting the new site.

The Results

In the few weeks since launch of their new website, Pragmatic Marketing reports a 7% increase in site visitors, leading to increases in newsletter and blog subscriptions. Visitors' average time spent on the site has increased dramatically, reinforcing anecdotal user reports of a higher quality of usability and navigability making it much easier for visitors to find critical information and register for training courses.