Cisco.com Enhancements Category Archives

March 28, 2008

Cisco New Support Wiki

We just released a wiki for our partners and customers to add their wisdom and learnings on top of Cisco’s documents. This augmentation of knowledge gives our user community a medium to share knowledge and improve their overall effectiveness.

Go ahead and start adding your perspective and learn from your colleagues viewpoints on the Support Wiki.

Posted by Abdul Halabieh at 01:30 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 27, 2008

My Dog is in Network World (but the Support team deserves the biggest tail wag!)

Thanks to Brad Reese at Network World Blogs for the kudos on our recently updated support area and for including a picture of my dog and me on the web site. It's an honor!

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out it wasn't my dog (or even me) that did the bulk of the work in redesigning the Cisco.com Support area, though we were cheering the team along all the way.

The design project for the Support area was lead by Abdul Halabieh and an able team within our Cisco Services organization, along with help from a team from frog Design in Austin.

And, if you were among the multitudes who gave us feedback at Networkers or in our many lab usability tests, in many ways you were designers and instigators of this new design.

Thank you!

Posted by Martin Hardee at 01:30 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 12, 2008

Cute Flash Movie on the New Search

This may be a little over the top, but there's a cute flash movie about our new Cisco.com search -- complete with roaming sports cars -- lurking as a kind of Easter egg on Cisco.com. Enjoy.

Posted by Martin Hardee at 06:00 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 07, 2008

Your Wonderful Comments on Cisco.com's New Search

We've gotten some really nice comments and constructive critiques of our new beta search (to go live as the main search very soon). Here's a recap...

A sampling from the many great positive comments:

“This works great. I love the filters, definitely helps me find what I'm looking for. I actually was led to content that I may have not normally reviewed.”

“The new 'search' concept is great!! The filter of results based on categories is a huge improvement.”

“Finally! what the [heck] took so long. the left side "filter by" was a long time coming.”
“Put this into production IMMEDIATELY”

“The new search, especially the sidebar filters, is absolutely GREAT. Implement this!”

“I love the new interface and the ability to quickly drill down on the types of documents I am looking for (specifically Design Guides, this time)”

"Looks much nicer, love search assist"

"Very useful. Could not find stuff 2 days ago on CCO - but can now find with the new search tool."

"Huge improvement." Ability to find release notes based on IOS - could not find before. Felt relevancy was better. Searched for: 12.2(18) sxf release notes - was able to get release notes.

"Certainly a step forward."

“Looks great when are you going to make it standard”

“It found the information needed at the first try.”

“The search result is more specific to what I need.”

And some constructive criticism:

“Please show more of the title at the top of each item. Right now it is difficult to differentiate between matches that have long titles that all begin with the same words.” (Title) - (We're working to fix this.)

“Negative: the Headers of the result links are too short.” (Title) - (We're working on this, too)

“Jeez, can you at least add more digits of the title???” (Title) - (And we're working on this one)

“tcp small servers works as a search, but not tcp-small-servers” - (And this one, too)

“I love the new interface and the ability to quickly drill down on the types of documents I am looking for (specifically Design Guides, this time). However, it would be even better if there is an ability to filter OUT things that I know I don't want.” - (We're studying exactly how to approach this kind of problem.)

Ability to use advanced operators to constrain the search (e.g., "inurl:", "filetype:") - (This is also in our "future consideration" list)

In regards to the breadcrumbs - "To me, it seems like it looks like everything else on the page….You'd probably want to emphasize it a little bit more, so someone could say, 'Oh, look! It's showing me that I'm narrowing it down.'" - (Future Consideration – we need to ensure it does not compete visually with the navigators. Stay tuned.)

Several suggested being able to see more search results on a page or to be able to define how many they would see. - (Another one for future Consideration)

Technorati Tags: Search Design Web-Design CustomerExperience

Posted by Martin Hardee at 09:50 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 18, 2008

Video Captioning

As a part of our continuing efforts to better your Cisco.com experience, recently we upgraded the look of our closed captioning:

Before:

After:

Can you tell the difference? We eliminated the high-contrast black outlining on the characters (top version) and instead moved to a translucent bed that we overlay the text onto (bottom version).

Not only does it look nicer, but it's more readble!

Technorati Tags: Web Video Design Web-Design CustomerExperience

Tunes: Tom Cochrane: Life is a Highway

Posted by Martin Hardee at 06:59 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 08, 2008

February 04, 2008

Cisco.com's New Small & Medium Business Area

We recently revamped our site area for Small & Medium Business, and we think the changes are a nice improvement.

Before:

After:

Here are some details of what we changed and why...

Before: Main Page

A nice collection of information above, but there's sooo much happening on this one page: It's a jumble of technical, product, and business information all together. For instance, if you're a business person looking at this page, would you instantly know what "integrated technologies" are? And, would some of the "big company" content linked here be of use to you?

After: Main Page

The redesigned page above is more focused. We think it provides a nice path to useful information whether you're more business-oriented (where we show kinds of "I need to..." solutions that map to some of the new challenges of running a company) or more product-oriented (where we link to newly designed pages that showcase products and product categories). Also, there's a nice spot at the top for showing videos of Cisco's products in action.

See the new Small & Medium Business Main Page live.

Before: Technology Solution Area

While the example above is a fine page with lots of useful information, it's a rather daunting list of things to read. There's no real coherence to the experience here: What should I read first? Of the dozens of links, which are the critical things to look at? If I have limited time, what's the short overview of what I need to know?

After: Product/Technology Page

We combined some brief technology overviews with case studies and overviews of our product series.

See this new product category page live.

Also: A Business Solution Example

In this new design (in this case showing a more business-oriented page), we showcase a real-world case study in an easy-to-digest video, and then have organized the information into more bite-sized chunks under tabs. The same types of information are available as before, but they're better organized and presented with more context.

See this new solution page design live.

And, a new look for product pages:

For product series pages, such as the one depicted above, we've organized information into easy to scan tabs. All of the technical background is still available (see the models page, which links to background on all the product models).

See a live new product series page.

Technorati Tags: Small Business Design Web-Design CustomerExperience

Tunes: Weezer: Beverly Hills

Posted by Martin Hardee at 07:30 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 30, 2008

The New Tabs on Cisco.com

This is a little thing, but we updated the look and behavior of tabs across many areas of Cisco.com. Here's a video about it:

Technorati Tags: Design Web-Design CustomerExperience

Tunes: Air Traffic: Time Goes By

Posted by Martin Hardee at 10:17 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

October 01, 2007

New Design for Cisco.com’s Support Area

Over this past weekend, the Cisco.com Support area adopted a new navigation model we call "Task Based Navigation."

We think this is an easier way to get around the support area, and this model is well suited for an audience that performs discreet tasks regularly as part of their jobs. We've been testing it over the last few months with lots of our support customers, and some of you saw it in person at our booth at Networkers.

Here's how it works: Say you are starting with a specific task, such as downloading software. First you click on our download icon, and then an interactive chooser appears allowing you to zero in on the specific product you need the download for. The same model works for troubleshooting, maintenance or configuration. The idea is to ask support visitors for two pieces of information, their intent/task and the product, then show all relevant resources. There's a neat Flash demo showing everything, and here's a picture of the page:

By contrast, what is support navigation like when it isn't tasked based? Think of a patient going to the doctor’s office and being asked as the first question: "What would you like, a tablet, a syringe or physical therapy?" Of course, a typical patient's answer would be “I have no idea!” But on many support sites, the navigation isn't exactly oriented to tasks and products, and users start trying different random actions hoping for the best. The new Task Based Navigation mitigates this guessing game by showing all relevant resources for a task by product combination and therefore narrowing the choices to a manageable set.

By the way, the system is a bit "smart" in that it remembers your settings throughout the session: The task and the product selection variables are set globally so that that the rest of your experience during the current session defaults to them -- that is, we don't have to keep asking the same questions over and over. Other models built based on asking users to select an info type -- which often times don’t correspond to an intent -- lead to frustration because users end up trying different types and each time having to specify the product repeatedly.

Based on all our user research and analysis we feel this approach will serve our customers well, but we will discover how well we are hitting the mark in the next few weeks.

Please send us your comments as you try the new system.

- Abdul Halabieh (posted by Martin Hardee since Abdul is on a well-deserved vacation!)

Posted by Martin Hardee at 09:26 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Web 2.0 Beyond the Hype

On the Cisco.com team, we're often asked by colleagues in other companies "what are you doing with Web 2.0?"

The answer depends in part on how you define Web 2.0. At Cisco, we include a wide range of elements, like user participation, engagement, user-generated content, short-form videos, and a mobile platform. We've made a concerted effort to include these in Cisco.com over the last year. Some of the efforts have been quite successful, and we've learned a lot in the process.

One key thing we've learned about Web 2.0 features is that it's important to integrate them into the total experience. Cisco.com is a large corporate website that serves many purposes for many different audiences--customers seeking pre-sales information, others looking for post-sales support, analysts seeking financial data, and/or press seeking the latest news ASAP. It's a site that inherently has many purposes. I think about it as a manifestation of the entire company online, communicating to and with the market. So, when we can use 2.0 devices to improve communication, integrated within the overall experience, we're going to be all over it.

Here are some of the more popular 2.0 elements we've integrated into our pages:

- Short-form videos. These are 2-4 minutes long -- we call them "Video Datasheets" --on many of the Product pages. Visitors seem to love them--they're usually among the most clicked modules on their page.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/phones/ps379/index.html?pcontent=youinc_us.

We've learned some interesting things about video and how it increases visitors' engagement. I'll write about that in a future post.

- Customer conversations. On key pages, we're now providing an active window into topical NetPro discussions by lifting those discussions out of the community and placing them in the Product pages, increasing participation dramatically.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/index.html

- Mobile Web. We have a nifty mobile site, accessible via most mobile browsers--the traffic is booming, driven by smartphone sales, iphone mania, and new mobile apps and widgets. We're proud that our mobile site was a 2007 Webby Award nominee. Check out www.cisco.com on your device.

- Click-to-chat. The "let us help" boxes on many pages include the ability to immediately IM with Cisco representatives anytime during business hours. This has been a great source of sales leads and I'll definitely be talking about this also in a future post.

This first wave of 2.0 has been exciting, but the future looks even hotter. The latest trends we're exploring include personalization, online collaboration, and adaptivity--changing the online experience to reflect the visitor's interests and behaviors. We're only at the beginning of this new Internet era, and as John Chambers says, it's going to be as big and revolutionary as the first one, if not more so.

Posted by Michael Metz at 09:15 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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