Tuesday, 13 November 2007 | Levent OZLER

New Panasonic Website by Renegade

One year in development, "Panasonic, Ideas for Life" completely rebuilt website launched last month. The new site was designed and produced by Panasonic's longtime interactive & event agency Renegade, which also coordinated the efforts of several outside tech partners.

In rebuilding the Panasonic.com website for the first time since its 2000 launch, the first order of business was to solve a number of complex design, content, and architecture challenges. To differentiate their brand and exceed customer expectations, Panasonic had to provide a seamless and contextual integration between the learning, shopping and product support experience.

"While the original site did include e-commerce capability, the user- experience had become cluttered as the site was expanded over a period of years and lacked a comprehensive strategy to connect various content silos," said Renegade executive creative director Fanny Krivoy. "In order to move forward, we needed to step back and determine what was necessary to design and build a solid yet scalable foundation that could support the growth of the business.

The new site spans over 300 pages and is managed via some 60 templates that deliver diverse content ranging from product details (over 1,500 SKUs), operating manuals and "How to Guides" to rich media and custom learning tools. "In building out the site's extensive architecture the real challenge was in connecting the e-commerce with learning and support content to provide a 360 view on everything available for a specific product," noted Krivoy.

To achieve the needed balance, Panasonic, spent over a year studying web analytics data, fielding consumer surveys and working with Renegade to draft a plan to streamline the website and get users to what they need in the fewest clicks possible.

The old Pansonic.com website was poorly organized and lacked cohesiveness. "Things were pretty ad hoc," said Panasonic vice president, e-business, Jeremy Dalnes.

Designed Around Three Key Actions
The first order of business was to understand what users want to accomplish while on the Panasonic.com website. Research showed that users want to learn about new products, get pricing and comparison information and get product support. Therefore the new online experience was designed around three key actions: Shop and Compare, Learn About It, and Get Support. A more dynamic and intuitive navigation enables users to by-pass high-level categories and go directly to sub-categories or the products themselves. Users can conduct a narrow search for specific model number or broadly search a category and browse all related content. "Learn and Explore" provides users with virtual try-before-you- buy experiences, guides on what to look for when considering a product, easy-to-understand definitions for hi-tech terms and "C-net like" category overviews.

With new embedded analytics, the redesigned site tracks customers as they navigate through the content. Previously, consumer's routes took them down one of three unconnected information silos. The new design solves that problem by including search, e-commerce, research and support on every page.