Global Brand Activation Powered by Drupal
Sinch is a brand with rapid growth goals. Based in Sweden, this international telecom and cloud communication-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) had its sights firmly set on North America. Our challenge was to build U.S. brand affinity and market share with a new website that would take the company vision, lead generation, and customer experience to the next level.
Sinch is continuously acquiring new communication technology and developing new products. Being in a state of change is the norm. While change is great for innovation, a frequently shifting product portfolio can be challenging for users who want to understand what Sinch does in simple terms. Our goal was to present Sinch’s offering in a clear and compelling way to key buyer personas, while also being flexible to change.
MAKING EVERY BUZZ COUNT
Sinch operates globally with a product portfolio consisting of communication APIs that span SMS, video, voice, and rich messaging to elevate mobile marketing.
However powerful, communication APIs are, irony aside, not the easiest thing to describe visually on a website. This is a problem facing many SaaS organizations that cannot rely on screenshots to tell a complete story.
A primary challenge for Sinch’s new website was to communicate the potential of their products, including the use cases and applications Sinch’s technology enables. The Drupal website needed to organize products and to show (rather than tell) how every SMS sent could be more effective with Sinch.
TECHNICAL
Other challenges were technical. Integrating multiple marketing automation platforms and CRMs (a result of rapid acquisitions) with Drupal, along with custom tools such as a comprehensive pricing API, required a flexible approach. Integrating disparate martech applications would prove to be a major theme of the project.
CONTENT
Last, and certainly not least, was the challenge of rallying and organizing a swarm of international content teams, production designers, and other agency partners to produce the content and media to populate the site, page by page, across time zones, disciplines, and languages.
CROSS-POLLINATING IDEAS
An intensive discovery process engaged senior Sinchers across the organization to help sharpen the new go-to-market strategy. Different companies and product portfolios had merged together under the new Sinch brand, which defined the vision, but there can still be a gap between what’s in a brand deck and what users will actually click on in the menu.
Therefore, navigation is often the perfect place to start (along with user personas) to gain alignment. Information architecture, user journeys, and navigation artifacts helped define the core of the user experience and align internal Sinch teams on key terms and ideas. The resulting nav was then tested (and retested) against competitors for task efficiency and validated with SMEs.
SWEETER SAAS STORYTELLING
An unexplored brand meant we had free reign to explore design interpretations and see how far we could push Sinch’s new look. Working alongside Sinch designers, we collaboratively developed a completely new design system (managed in Drupal, thanks to Paragon) featuring content components that would showcase the product story and drive conversions.
But components and an easy Drupal admin UI were only part of the story. Some of the most challenging work was the content itself—the visuals and media assets would carry the weight of the messaging and truly bring the Sinch story to life. This is where our lead designer served as art director to oversee the network of design teams producing assets within a single thematic vision.
GATHER & PRODUCE
Drupal content training and support ensured that Sinch admins could effectively leverage drag-and-drop components to build pages efficiently and bring the site to life. Content coordination tracked asset production, page creation, and QA across the sitemap (and the globe). In addition, “office hours” with content teams helped identify QA issues early and support content editors who were unfamiliar with Drupal.
Visual assets created to help tell the Sinch story
Pages of content orchestrated and produced across teams and partners
International time zones across which global teams were coordinated
COLLABORATION ORCHESTRATION
A collaborative, international effort culminated in a completely new Sinch experience from the ground up, one rooted in simplicity and engaging storytelling. Pages are designed to be as self-contained as possible to drive towards conversion. Although Sinch will continue to evolve, the Drupal site’s navigation, content structure, and flexible component system will support content teams as the business needs change.
Foundationally, Sinch.com represents the initial thrust into the North American market, but new, region-specific sites are already planned to extend functionality and content to localized sites for translation.
Increase in demo signups
Increase in talk-to-sales contact forms
Increase in users via organic search