Designing a Digital Experience Solution with WordPress

Overview

The client wanted to develop a custom digital experience sales and marketing platform to improve engagement with their enterprise customers during the sales process. A custom WordPress Multisite-based solution was selected that supported the initial requirements, offered support for future wish list requirements, and enabled the company to deliver the solution as progressive web applications (PWAs) for clients.

Customer Snapshot

  • International company with offices in three countries and a primarily distributed, home-based staff
  • Technology industry company specializing in providing enterprise B2B solutions

Key Differentiators

  • Leverages free and low-cost plugins, a commercial theme, and a child theme
  • Can be used from pre-sales to support

Solution Snapshot

  • New WordPress Multisite progressive web applications (PWA) development project
  • The solution is hosted on shared WordPress hosting
  • Minimal custom code development required

Skills Needed

  • Gravity Forms Environment
  • HTML/CSS
  • SSL
  • WordPress

The Challenge

The client wanted to develop a custom digital experience sales and marketing platform to improve engagement with their enterprise customers during the sales process. The solution needed to provide sales and marketing staff with an easy-to-customize platform where they could quickly create custom visual and content experiences, assess engagement with content pages and assets, allow sharing the content within the client’s company, and facilitate the conversion process.

Additional early requirements included having the ability to use predesign content blocks and layouts to create custom pages, ensure security, and support confidentiality between potential clients.

Existing package solutions were reviewed and found to be lacking in functionality or usability, have a cost-prohibitive price tag long-term, or require an excessively long implementation period. Since the solution concept was new to the company, it was determined that the investment needed for a traditional custom development methodology was also not cost or time-effective at this time. They were also looking to test out their service process and refine requirements before committing to a more significant development effort.

QAT Global’s project team suggested developing the solution using WordPress as a framework for the custom web application to quickly and cost-effectively get a solution to the sales and marketing team. A custom WordPress Multisite-based solution was selected that supported the initial requirements, offered support for future wish list requirements, and enabled the company to deliver the solution as progressive web applications (PWAs) for clients.

The Solution

QAT Global helped the customer envision an omnichannel solution that would engage their clients from pre-sales to support. The solution was developed using three junior and one senior US WordPress developer part-time in two months. Daily meetings were conducted where project status was reviewed.  Testing was done throughout development to ensure the solution performed as required.

The development time included the technical setup and design of the solution, creation of the content and layout library items, development of an extensive array of forms, and templating of a variety of emails to support potential client engagement. Security issues were addressed by installing a wildcard SSL certificate at the web host, designing a unique naming structure, using a security plugin, and employing some custom code.

The solution enables sales to have the marketing team create a personalized digital experience for each potential client once they have actively engaged with them to further facilitate the communication process and increase engagement. These experiences are designed for internal company sharing, so additional contacts can easily be invited.

  • Uses a multisite architecture to create custom digital experiences
  • Content can be customized based on website visits, advertising interactions, and sales team conversations
  • Experiences can contain a single page or multiple pages and include micro-interactions, videos, external links, custom attachments, forms, integrations with other apps and tools, etc.
  • Technology
    • WordPress Multisite
    • Commercial template
    • Can be initiated by the marketing department
    • Pages can be built and customized using a library of customizable content and layout containers
    • New sections and content can be added as the conversation progresses
    • Experiences are designed to keep them from appearing in the search engines
    • Users are assigned roles to manage access to content and functionality
    • Analytics is installed to help assess engagement
    • Core areas of application functionality can be enabled or disabled with a single click
    • A site copier plugin is used to duplicate a core template site to new subdomains to allow quick setup
  • Includes caching strategies, logo, theme color, and display mode customization for the PWAs
  • Forms can be individually routed to one or more staff
  • Performs well even on a shared WordPress hosting account

While prospects can log in to the site easily, they can only see the content intended for them, and other potential clients are not identifiable by other clients. The solution is very secure and provides a seamless transition from pre-sales to ongoing support as prospects convert to customers.

Once the conversion occurs, the functionality is enhanced to provide multiple points of feedback for clients from the middle managers on up to the C Suite. Clients are given a dashboard where they can see all of the relevant details for their management level, provide feedback, make requests, and so forth. They can communicate staffing issues and satisfaction during project development and beyond, receive more general communications like holiday schedules for their team, and see an individual team member’s management hierarchy.

Overall, the solution provides a seamless user experience from pre-sales to support, enabling the client to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive industry. It also allows them to streamline their internal marketing, sales, and support workflows while improving customer engagement.