An acquisition calls for a new website…
After one of the largest mergers and acquisitions in history between Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications, and Brighthouse Networks, the company had a new, revived mission and brand image. This new company image created a needed vehicle to communicate a cohesive message to the many visitors of the site, including journalists, investors, financial analysts, corporate executives, and Charter’s Board of Directors.
This website is a collector of important company values and messages, like leadership information, community impact initiatives, product insights, quarter earning reports, and ESG reports.
Client
Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, Government Affairs
Year
2019 - 2020
Pitch → Discovery → Approvals → Launch
My Role: Product Owner
As the Product Owner for this project, my role was focused on bringing Charter’s executive leadership into the product strategy process. We leaned on a heavy and iterative discovery process to capture requirements from an executive team. Examples of artifacts coming out of this process included interviews, surveys, open and closed card-sorting, and high-fidelity design critiques.
Our team also partnered with Charter’s head of design to spearhead communication at a high level. Together, we iterated with Charter’s President, the CCO, CFO, COO, and the CMO to carefully craft the messages on the site.
Outside of the executive communication, I was involved in detailed steps including initial concept pitch, tech stack selection, team structure and hiring, budget, and ensuring the business units had a consistent voice and goals were captured and analyzed.
We launched the website in early 2020.
Design: When we embarked on designing the experience, Charter’s design system team just finished an exploratory “V1” system that introduced a new visual language, including revised voice and tone, new type stacks, new atomic components, and a renewed understanding on not only WCAG 2.0 AA standards, but the why behind creating accessible products. We carried these universal principles into the product strategy.
Development: Our lead architect on the team pushed heavily for a Drupal CMS with Aquia hosting, and a proprietary data analytics platform called Quantum. This technology suite was already in use by our partners on the CX team and vetted and proven support and success within the company. The editorial team preferred WordPress, but due to security concerns, we ended up going with Drupal. However, the editorial workflow was customized to better represent their needs and wants.
This website was also one of Charter’s first “born-accessible” products, allowing for accessibility architects and testers to be embedded within the design and development process.
KPI Goals
Increase organic traffic
Increase overall unique visits
Increase returning visitors for the various personas of the website
“Beat out” Charter’s Wikipedia page in Google search rank
Increase site response time
Before, circa 2020
The previous website was built and maintained by an external agency and managed by our clients in Corporate Communications. As an internal agency, the client came to us with many pain points, including the need for an updated tech stack, updated look-and-feel, and a revised content strategy born from the merger and acquisition.
After
Through heavy collaboration with our business stakeholders, we were able to create a new design on a more stable and secure tech stack. We updated the visual language, cleaned up URL structures to better optimize content discoverability for SEO goals, built the site for better mobile responsivity, and increased overall response time for our users. Our stakeholders were happy with the new navigation, properly showcasing the business goals and values. We also were able to make the website “born accessible,” setting a new standard for other corporate properties.
