Integrated IT Infrastructure Monitoring
Founded in 2007, the Chicago-based Panopta offers complex and adaptable software capabilities that monitor every aspect of an organization’s network, servers, and applications. Panopta’s advanced infrastructure monitoring platform provides the assurance of proactive alerts if there is a malfunction or breach of any kind.
Rapid technological evolutions, with a wide mix of public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise infrastructures, has increased both diagnostic delays and monitoring costs affecting organizations. Panopta centralizes the entire IT operations management function into a single, streamlined, cost-effective solution for detecting, diagnosing, and resolving incidents.
An essential differentiator for Panopta is a high degree of customization, with tiers of service levels to fit clients’ distinct needs.
Streamlined UX and Better Lead Generation
Panopta’s marketing director reached out to Solid Digital with a request for help in transforming its previous website. Along with an overall refresh of the site and a more up-to-date user experience, the site had grown to include too much content and Panopta was looking to consolidate the messaging. With the help of Panopta’s technical writer, Solid Digital consolidated the site architecture to two succinct levels.
In-depth discovery conversations revealed that the Panopta website and digital presence had been falling short of conveying Panopta’s unique value proposition or even conveying the types of solutions that Panopta provided. Achieving essential objectives required addressing the following issues:
- The website needed to serve as a better lead generation tool and attract more visitors.
- The need for clear and concise messaging was getting lost in a multitude of pages.
- Hard choices and housekeeping was needed to reduce an excessive number of plug-ins.
- Guidance in aligning the new site with a pay-per-click digital marketing strategy.
Further discovery took place in the form of the Solid Digital team witnessing the sales demo and standard pitch to prospective customers, which included a depth of information concerning Panopta’s current and prospective position within the entire sales and competitive ecosystem.
From Ideas to Implementation
A collaborative relationship and in-the-trenches expertise of Panopta’s marketing director proved essential in addressing some inherent challenges in creating an approachable and web experience that would help to humanize a shapeless, cloud-based technology solution.
Solid Digital’s design team drew inspiration from Panopta’s product such as the user interface, alerts and data points that factored into the site’s design, along with icons in interlocking shapes. Interspersed photos of some of the friendly looking humans who are representative of the various users of Panopta added another mix to the design language of the site.
Panopta’s brand guidelines, which included a color palette and font specifications, served as a foundation for design work which was propelled forward by an abundance of creative freedom.
The resulting design amounted to an effective balancing act that conveys high-stakes, data-driven functionality, within a fun and contemporary aesthetic that’s clean without being sparse. The supporting graphics are particularly compelling, and serve to tell a story in and of themselves.
Design that Works
The enhanced visual and user experience of the new site has fueled significant business benefits that drive various components of Panopta’s digital and sales strategy.
The fresh, and highly functional new site, which is a new source of pride throughout the company, served to position Panopta in a more positive light among potential customers, who visit the site as part of their process of vetting the company.
To help prospects find the Panopta in the first place, a depth of keyword research and competitor research revealed how Panopta was ranking for SEO relative to its competitors. Targeted keywords and key phrases have been identified to help boost rankings and track progress within goals that have been set up in analytics.
Analytics following the redesign have revealed a significant uptick in time that visitors are spending on the site, improved rankings for targeted keywords, and more importantly, the number of leads generated every week.
Turning over the Keys
Describing the Panopta team as “thought leaders and a lot of tech-savvy, digital marketing focused individuals,” Solid Digital’s UI/UX Designer emphasized the importance of Panopta’s people being able to manage the site themselves once it was built and launched — and that has been the case. Panopta is now able to easily switch out graphics, post blogs, add pages, and make whatever changes are needed.
Solid Digital handed Panopta the keys, eager to hear about the company’s experience with the new site and the growth that the new investment in it will spark.
Success Factors
The importance of a great working relationship can never be underestimated. Solid Digital is increasingly focused on working with clients whose values and ways of working represent great cultural alignment and the Panopta team fit that description to a T.
Working with them was a great experience, they were decisive, committed to keeping the project on schedule, and brought their A game every step of the way. Plus, a great sense of humor always helps in keeping the work fun and bringing out the very best of everyone on the team.
