The Project
Skillsoft is the global leader in corporate learning, offering unrivaled access to the largest and most comprehensive set of corporate training assets in the world. They train more professionals than any other company in the world including 65% of the Fortune 500. As they shifted their marketing efforts and revamped their branding, they looked to Imarc to redesign the Skillsoft website. Imarc led the way and helped Skillsoft showcase their new brand, update the content to focus on the learners, and create an intuitive learner journey to drive site visitors to sign up for a free trial.
Imarc was exceptional from the start of this project through the site launch. In the discovery phase, they took the time to understand the needs of the organization as we went through a rebranding and repositioning of the site. Prior to the launch, the existing site was a legacy B2B site that lacked dynamism and navigability, and it was not a true reflection of the organization. Imarc quickly understood our challenges and delivered a site design and architecture that met every need. Imarc has deep competence in every area from UX, to design, engineering, and account management. Working with Imarc has been an absolute pleasure.Richard Willis, Former Digital Marketing Director
Diving into Skillsoft
Imarc’s strategy team worked closely with the Skillsoft marketing team to fully understand the vision for the new brand. Imarc’s team conducted interviews across various teams at Skillsoft to understand the goal for Skillsoft’s future. We continued to dig deeper to understand pain points, Skillsoft’s audiences, and Skillsoft’s competitors.
Getting noticed
Imarc’s team built a custom SEO strategy, focused on priority keywords to increase rankings. We also built a road map for how to write effective content that is both SERP and user friendly. We updated 50+ meta descriptions, SEO titles and H1 to support new and existing pages on the site. Finally, we set up tracking for three keyword verticals (learn, buyer, talent) so we could provide data and insight into what content and messaging resonate best with each audience.
Driving a new experience
Skillsoft wanted to shift their focus by having the learner’s journey drive the experience on the new site. The intention is to quickly direct users to content that is most relevant to them and ultimately have them sign up for a free trial. To make this happen, the Imarc team created over 36 custom modules in Craft to build the site. These were designed to be responsive and were tested across multiple browsers and devices.
Designing a moving target
Skillsoft’s branding agency was still finalizing the new brand while Imarc began designing the site. But that didn’t slow us down! Our creative team took the reins using a small interim brand guide to build the first marketing piece showcasing the new brand. The creative team designed five key web pages to show the client initially, and they continued to build out countless components across the site. The final push was photography. Because the planned photoshoot of real Skillsoft learners was postponed, Imarc’s team sourced nearly 250 photos for the site that aligned with the new brand.
Building with accessibility top of mind
The development team worked around the clock to launch this site before Skillsoft’s Perspectives conference. With over 20,000 registered attendees, the hosting environment was spun up to handle this without any issues, along with 8,000 visitors the site receives on an average day. The site is built on the new Craft 3 CMS and uses Blitz caching. Special attention was given to accessibility and GDPR compliance to ensure that learners from around the world with any abilities could access the content.
Statement of Work Included
Stakeholder interviews
Research
Project planning
Competitive analysis
Experience strategy
Persona development
User experience
- Sitemaps
- Wireframes
- Responsive design
- Content strategy
- Front-end development
Creative
- Visual design
- Art direction
- Messaging & brand persona
- Copywriting
Development
- Content management system
- Ongoing support & maintenance
- Custom Craft CMS
Digital marketing
- Search engine optimization
- Content strategy