Cisco Meraki Product Catalog
The product catalog is a centralized database of Meraki’s products and licenses hosted on our marketing website. It allows users to quickly build out a quote and email themselves a copy, placing new logos into our pipeline through a Salesforce integration.
Problem
Meraki did not have an online catalog showcasing all products, accessories, licenses, or transparency around prices on our website.
Solution
To simplify our product experience we wanted to enable users to toggle between product families. A shoppable experience would allow us to up-sell licenses and track user journeys to learn from our customer’s behavior.
Ability to build a quote
This served the needs of our customers and sales engineers. Both experts and explorers could quickly build out a price estimate. If a new logo submitted their email, our sales team would reach out to them with their quote details on hand.
The product database
From a web perspective, creating this database would allow us to easily manage content and updates (CMS), enable localization, and report on engagement and performance to make data-driven decisions.
My portion of the project kicked off with a series of interviews, wireframes, and user testing sessions while reporting cross-functionally to ensure all was feasible.
Product Marketing Managers
I had to define what each product family licensing experience looked like. There were seven product families and each started with a single enterprise license, with a variety of add-ons.
Sales Engineers
I wanted to understand what they used to build out quotes for clients and what problems this would solve for them if any. I also wanted to know what a north star looked like to them.
Partner Resellers
Our partners generate business from our business, so I wanted to gather their feedback on their current catalogs and quote-building tools. Learning about their pain points and what they liked helped give me insight into what I should prioritize.
Web Team
This new database would power the catalog and the quote builder, our complete product experience on the website. A product finder and comparison tool were originally scoped as part of our overhaul but then deprioritized in the end.
Problem: Too many clicks
The journey for a user to navigate from one product model page to another different product family, involved four clicks.
Solution: Reduce number of clicks
Showcase all products in a simple filtering system to omit the problem in navigating between families.
Problem: Lack of transparency
Only on a model detail page was there one line of legal copy at the bottom of the page, sharing that a license was required to operate the piece of hardware. To learn about pricing, users would have to rely on reaching out to sales.
Solution: Communicate licensing and pricing visually
When adding a product to a quote, users would be served a modal educating them on the license(s) available. Tooltips would also be included to help users understand the license(s).
Problem: Ability to build a quote was in demand
One of the biggest discoveries was a legacy Cost Calculator tool that was being used by sales associates to create rough quotes for potential customers. It was off our website and extremely outdated. It was not user-friendly and did not have saving or exporting capabilities.
Solution: Omit the legacy Cost Calculator tool
There were over 10k visits to this tool a month, knowing there were sales associates using this was concerning but validated how we needed an updated tool. We would redirect this URL to the new product catalog once live.
Problem: UI of the Cisco Commerce estimation tool
This is how all Meraki Sales Engineers create quotes for customers globally. Promotions and discounts live in this system but it is not very user-friendly. Feedback was if we could create a simplified version of this that it would make the sales team’s life much easier.
Solution: Simplify the UI
After receiving feedback on the UI as well as the search capabilities, we knew a clean and modern approach to a product catalog would please our sales team. The convenience of having a catalog dedicated to Meraki-only products would thrill as well.
Competitor audit
None of our competitors hosted a catalog of their products or the ability to build out a quote. The industry standard was to reach out to sales to get a price estimate. There were some comparison tools but zero communication around pricing or licensing.
Cisco recently rolled out a BETA of a product catalog, view it here.
Usability testing
I pushed out some using testing sessions with stakeholders, sales engineers, and the web team. Below are some of the design iterations that took place and the prototypes that went through testing.
Feedback
Filtering by solutions was not needed – this is something I wanted to explore for explorer personas who would enter here and possibly be interested in some solution packs.
The comparison tool was limited – if this tool existed, users wanted the ability to compare more than three products at a time.
Needed more space for licensing – the current design was only accounting for 1/3/5 year options and this was not scalable with our products.
Anchored “view quote” bar – since this product lived on our marketing website, we were unable to insert a ‘cart’ or ‘shopping basket’ into the navigation bar. We had to propose solutions that could work, but this one didn’t pass the web team’s approval.
Remove the black bar up top – this took up a lot of real estate and was not needed.
Feedback
The horizontal filter bar didn’t work – this design buried the product family names and would require a second filter of subcategories (accessories, licenses) which users found hindering.
Add to quote bar worked well – this living under the main navigation worked well, and the web team approved.
The Meraki green was intense – I wanted to get an opinion on the feel of the green in comparison to the last round using purple. Purple was the winner.
There were many rounds of design ideas I wanted to test to get feedback on that did not make it to the end. Quick links, cross-selling of accessories after adding an item to the quote, and ‘new’ banners on tiles were among a few examples. You can view more here and the final wireframes below.
Technical limitations
Localization of this catalog outside of the United States was backlogged due to a lack of resources but will be re-prioritized over time. Because of this, we were unable to connect the products shown in the catalog to product detail pages.
Today, the product catalog and quote builder live on the website under the resources tab and have replaced the legacy Cost Calculator.
Since going live
Catalog homepage engagement has increased by 1300% YoY
(Oct 2021, 202 clicks → Oct 2022, 2879 clicks)Adopted by over 90% of our sales team
Over 500 qualified leads submitted (consistently 30/month)
Unable to report on total pipeline but estimated minimum to date is $2.2M
