Microsoft Windows Mobile, the division of Microsoft that brings Office software and Internet applications to handheld devices, asked frog to rebuild their website in a way that would optimize the user experience. The challenge was to create a site that would educate prospective users about mobile products and services while simultaneously providing support to those already online. By reorganizing the site's vast content into a clear, consumer-oriented architecture, Microsoft hoped to generate new business while reinforcing brand identity and ensuring customer satisfaction.
frog conducted intensive shareholder interviews with Microsoft to define the business goals and core requirements of the new website. This insight was then augmented with competitive industry analysis, focus group investigation, a full content inventory, and technical analysis of existing site metrics.
We found that Windows Mobile customers were divided between two basic motives for use: business and personal. To be successful, the website would require a new visual language that could appeal equally to users from both categories: the CEO and the college grad, the jet-setter and the homemaker. As a company, Microsoft rose to success by bridging the gap between office and home. The new website needed to understand and embody this duality.
Our team and Microsoft worked hand-in-hand to guarantee that aesthetic sensibility and technical viability developed in tandem. Design solutions focused on the discoverability of content, creating separate, well-defined areas of the website for new handsets and capabilities, user support, and community features like blogs and newsgroups. Once these paths were in place, users from any walk of life could more easily locate the services that were right for them: the CEO connecting to new business applications and "productivity add-ons," the college kid, a live TV feature, and music downloading. To facilitate the efficient purchase of such products, a buyer's guide was fully integrated throughout the site, improving the use of breadcrumbs, content highlights, and purchase links. Another tab linked users to the Microsoft corporate site, embedding the Windows Mobile identity within the context of the larger organization.
frog then created a new, easily-recognizable aesthetic to fit this cleaner framework; a simple, modern presentation of the Microsoft identity that - like the Windows Mobile service - maintained the brand's integrity while expanding in a new direction. This brand aesthetic was instituted on every page and in every feature, its simplicity helping to reduce page weight and increase visual pleasure, resulting in a more positive user experience.
frog and Microsoft had designed a complete web experience in which every detail was considered and resolved - from copy and graphics to design, architecture and workflow. And because we were able to deliver not only the textual and visual content for the site, but also integrated front-end and back-end coding, HTML content, and XML, Microsoft was able to launch the site almost immediately upon delivery, a rare industry phenomenon.
The resulting site helped position Microsoft Windows Mobile as a leading force in the mobile communications space, setting the benchmark for online marketing, support, and evangelism of mobile software and devices.
