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Pearson global store redesign

Pearson / IBM
Content Strategist
2019
Content Strategy · Structure Content · Information Architecture
Background

IBM was engaged by Pearson to create a global store where higher education students could purchase educational materials — digital and hard copy — with the minimum of friction.

Problem statement

Pearson's store was fragmented country-by-country and built print-first, so it couldn't scale. I created the content strategy, content models and taxonomy that turned it into a single, scalable global store.

Key issues
  • Poor search functionality due to a lack of metadata strategy
  • Confusing taxonomy with hundreds of overly narrow categories, often leading to dead ends and pages with no results
  • A design that surfaced the backend system rather than the user's needs — most users only succeeded in buying because they were given direct product links by their teachers
Research & insights
  • A content audit found a significant amount of content that users didn't want, such as blogs
  • Data showed that the top 100 titles accounted for the majority of sales — efforts were concentrated accordingly
  • Testing with students informed a new, appropriate tone of voice
What I did
  • Developed a content strategy supporting reusable, structured content (COPE — Create Once, Publish Everywhere) within Adobe AEM, integrated with a new product system (Hybris)
  • Designed and implemented content models for user-centred, platform-agnostic content types across the site
  • Developed a new subject taxonomy and adaptive information architecture that responded to users' geolocation, supporting both global consistency and local flexibility
  • Created a metadata plan to improve product discoverability and search functionality
  • Defined a content governance strategy to ensure long-term consistency and scalability
  • Worked closely with SEO and engineering teams to implement structured content within the CMS
  • Developed a new tone of voice tailored to higher education students, with a supporting style guide
  • Created navigational, transactional, and contextual copy, as well as reusable content patterns to support consistency across the site
Results
  • Content modelling mapped to the CMS
  • Created reusable content patterns
  • Adaptive information architecture
Claire is a rare content specialist that understands both content strategy and content design. Her expertise and knowledge were fundamental to creating an adaptive content strategy, engineering new content models, and developing a content governance process. I can't recommend Claire enough.
Eleni Demetriou, Head of Content, Pearson
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