It’s easy to get excited when a project you worked on wins multiple awards. It’s easy to start puffing up with pride and feeling like it’s all about you. Makes me think of the Leon character in the Budweiser commercials that really did think it was all about him. When told there’s no I in “team” he responds with, “Well there ain’t no ‘we’ either.”
But the truth is teamwork is, in fact, all about the “we.” When we embarked on the redesign project for www.intouchsol.com, our goal was to create a best-in-class website to attract new clients and reinforce existing clients’ decision to choose Intouch. The best way to do this? Create a content hub, showcase our subject matter experts (SMEs) and expertise across the digital marketing spectrum, and do this by sharing the knowledge and insights Intouch has gained from more than a decade of leadership in pharma and health care marketing. It took a team from across all agency lines to come together and create a site that integrates the key specialties of the agency – digital strategy, creative, social, mobile, content, user experience, and search marketing – to create a hub that showcases our talent and provides perspective on the latest industry developments.
Each team played a vital role in the redesign effort and it breaks down something like this:
- The creative design team was involved from the beginning to design a modern and eye-appealing site that showcased the Intouch brand and our capabilities.
- The user experience team was on hand to make sure the design and architecture respected customer-centric best practices.
- The copywriters dug deep to bring Intouch’s culture to life on the site through the eloquence of words.
- The development team worked to build a stable site within a content management system (CMS) that would provide ease-of-use and the ability to quickly update content while remaining true to the design.
- The strategic services team made sure the site was search-engine optimized throughout and that analytics tracking was in place.
- The emerging media team ensured content was portable and shareable, best practices were applied, and external social media strategies were in place.
- The mobile team worked alongside the other teams to develop the mobile version of the site (m.intouchsol.com) and drove the implementation of mobile best practices.
- The BSA and QA team and creative project managers were the glue that helped hold it all together, making sure that every detail was completed correctly.
- Even our CEO, Faruk Capan, realized the importance and high visibility of this project and ultimately was the client who approved each step of the process.
- As the business development manager who owned this project, my job was to work with all of the above teams and keep this project moving forward – meet the goals, keep the team on schedule, make sure they slept, brief the client along the way, find resources to get the work done, make sure I slept, and get the project done and launched on time!
As a result of the collective team’s commitment to the project, the redesign has met and exceeded all goals and expectations. Overall website traffic is up 75%, traffic from search engines is up 72% and page visits are up 24% (source: Omniture). In addition, the industry has taken notice. In September 2011 Intouch was awarded PM360’s Trailblazer Award for the Best Self-Promotion Initiative. Then, in October 2011, we won three separate W3 Awards for our website features – Home Page, Structure & Navigation, and Visual Appeal. And in terms of meeting our ultimate goal: retaining and attracting clients? Suffice it to say, business is good!
Creating a best-in-class website took time, planning, many long hours, lots of pizza, but most importantly it took teamwork. Working with an incredible team to build a quality product is rewarding. Winning industry awards, well that’s just icing on the cake!