Sony

Product comparison tool

The situation

In 2013, Sony embarked on a new strategic initiative to centralize their various consumer electronics websites into a single web platform. This meant we had to raise production standards and align web properties across the enterprise.
One of my main challenges was to unify how we show technical specifications to buyers. Beforehand, tech specs were spread across various microsites, PDFs, and internal documentation. And these are complex electronics, with a ton of technical specifications that can differ significantly down to the SKU level.

Working hand-in-hand with product marketing specialists, to use their deep insight of the variations between very similar products. Not only their expertise, but their enthusiasm and connection to other enthusiasts. Through multiple interviews, we established the key features they find most important. And we wrote those technical specifications to match the terminology we heard most often in the research sessions.
I conducted a months-long discovery process, inventorying and auditing existing content for hundreds of SKUs across 15+ product lines. This provided a baseline understanding of what required updates, and what content could be scrapped.
I then created a detailed style guide for each product line. This included rules for displaying units of measure, the priority order for each specification type, and agreed upon terminology shared across product lines. This meant that no matter where a buyer was on the site—looking at a single product’s tech specs or comparing across multiple products—they knew where to look for the information they needed.

Tech Specs page reached 100% of product pages by Jun 2015
Continues as the content structure for Sony’s specification pages up to present
The new tech spec and comparison pages received very positive feedback from both internal Sony leadership and buyers alike. It even got a few write-ups in trade blogs and by third-party providers, such as CodyHouse.