a thriving business community gets even better

Visit the Small Business Community

› Project: Implement critical improvements to the community
› Position: Consultant, Creative Director, Delivery Manager
› Year: 2008
› Project Summary: See below

› Note: The community was redesigned in 2013. This design lasted five delightful years.

Building on the successful launch of the Small Business Community, Bank of America turned to Akgold to fine tune the community.

Services:

› Consulting
› Strategy
› Ideation
› User Experience Direction
› Creative Direction
› Product and Delivery Management

Opportunity

Bank of America’s Small Business Online Community launched in 2007 (see Generation 1) on time and in budget under the leadership of AKGold. In 2008, the community grew to tens of thousands of members, millions of page views, and thousands of posts by users. The goal for 2008 was to make several improvements to all aspects of the community in addition to laying the foundation for social networking and a new technical platform.

Solution

Andrew led the project and guided it to successful completion.The team looked carefully at each page of the Small Business Online Community and created a long list of improvements. Based upon research, use cases and analytical data, the team prioritized this list and set schedule to optimize implementation.

There were multiple types of improvements including: design, configuration, nomenclature, new features, functionality, optimization, etc. In collaboration with iCrossing, the team implemented a host of search engine optimizations enhancements that helped pages in the community be searchable and ranked highly.

Results

All performance measures of the community increased including adoption and usage, participation, and search engine marketing. Today the Small Business Community is one of the most successful communities in the world.

Testimonial

Continued Success with Jive Software

“This was an extremely demanding project with tight deadlines and an enormous number of features. Andrew demonstrated an outstanding set of leadership qualities that carried us though that rigorous schedule to deliver a high quality product, while maintaining great humor and perspective through the situation. First off, his level of commitment was inspiring. When the need arose to expedite communication, he came on-site and directly integrated with our team, to make himself available to clarify all the many requirements that needed to be fulfilled. Next, I think he has a great design sense and eye for detail, which is the critical difference between good and great web sites. His vision for the product and genuine passion for a high quality end result inspired my team, and drove us to carry the project through to the end. He was very generous with his appreciation of our efforts, which encouraged us and made us care all the more for the project and end result.”

— Greg Weinger, Professional Services Engineering Manager, Jive Software

Summary

› Consulted with Bank of America as Creative Director and Delivery Manager for the Small Business Online Community Generation 2
› Managed all aspects of the project including ideation, design, prototyping, and specifications

› Partnered closely with Jive Software and the development team to ensure nimble build and launch
› Extended value proposition for the Community through user feedback and integration of new features
› Evaluated social networking options and helped refine the product roadmap
› Added the fourth win to successful consulting projects with Bank of America

a thriving business community gets even better

Building on the successful launch of the Small Business Community, Bank of America turned to Akgold to fine tune the community.

Opportunity

Solution

Results

Continued Success with Jive Software

Summary

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