The Symbol Technologies website grew layer by layer over the years with whatever tools and material could be found at the time. As a result, it wasn’t delivering what Symbol’s clients and users needed: cohesive navigation to content, an intuitive organization of information, and a consistent brand experience.

Within the space of one year, Cherilyn Stringer, Symbol’s Director of Strategic Communications, turned a loose collection of disconnected web content into a cohesive information service that could keep up with Symbol’s multi-billion dollar business.

Change at Symbol was set in motion when executive management acknowledged that the website had to be redesigned, and they set an extremely aggressive deadline: three months.

FG SQUARED was tasked with managing the entire project — from strategic design to implementation and maintenance.

The site needed to serve several fundamental marketing needs:

• Offer consistent navigation so that visitors could find the information they needed. For example, over 12,000 channel partners used Symbol.com keep their sales teams up-to-date on product information.
• Keep content fresh over time as new global initiatives launch.
• Maintain flexibility to serve many different stakeholders.
• Deliver central control for marketing to deliver a consistent brand presentation across all sites — including the international sites.
• Convey the company’s thought-leadership in the enterprise mobility marketplace.

Policy and Process:
After reviewing the situation and interviewing stakeholders, FG SQUARED proposed investing in procedures and systems that would not only ensure the success of the project, but would equip the site to continue to meet the goals of the business over time. Their recommendations included the following:

• Create a simple content management system that can be used by any stakeholder
• Install a “thin and quick” trouble-ticket system that ensures nothing is missed between the teams working on the project
• Implement a weekly update meeting and a project WIKI that keeps the team in sync
• Develop a detailed Policies and Procedures document, Web Style Guideline document, and implementation kits to enforce the implementation of web content worldwide
• Design quality assurance procedures to get all stakeholders involved in creating an accurate and error-free site

Symbol embraced this systematic approach to building the site. “We needed to move from a reactive stance to a proactive approach to managing the site,” Cherilyn Stringer summarized.

The Symbol Technologies website supported 4,600 pages of content. The site encompasses over 15,000 web addresses, including all of the legacy URLs that past visitors may have bookmarked. Symbol.com now services nearly 10,000 visits a day, with traffic increasing 18% annually.

The new site enabled stakeholders from around the world to deliver a consistent brand experience thanks to the policies and procedures put in place by the team. Visitors can now easily locate content because the site is sensibly organized and the site’s search engine is powerful and accurate. Visitors also have easy access to Symbol’s educational and thought-leadership content through the online Knowledge Center.

“Symbol.com now tells the story of who we are as a company,” Cherilyn concluded at the end of the project. “The site is up to the standards of our business as a whole.”

*On January 9, 2007, Motorola acquired Symbol Technologies in a multi-billion dollar deal. FG SQUARED integrated Symbol’s site into the tens of thousands of pages of content found on the Motorola site. Symbol’s products and solutions are now a subset of Motorola’s B2B products under the category of Enterprise Mobility.

**www.symbol.com was largely migrated to http://www.motorola.com/business in December of 2007. Some of the legacy symbol.com site is still intact, with no current plans to migrate. The areas of symbol.com that are still housed under the symbol.com domain are:

• http://www.symbol.com/partner
• http://www.symbol.com/support