Launching GE Digital’s website

GE Digital transform how industrial companies do business. Combining people, technology and advanced analytics, we accelerate digital transformation for our customers. 

I led the creation of GE Digital’s first website, working across GE’s divisions with all levels of management.

Play Video about GE industrial equipment maintenance, wind turbine

Background:

GE created GE Digital, a move that brought together all of the digital capabilities from across the company into one organization. GE Digital integrated GE’s Software Center of Excellence (COE), the expertise of GE’s global IT and commercial software teams, and the application development arm of GE Intelligent Platforms (GEIP). 

Challenge:

The new division needed a website to support sales of its products, awareness of Predix, its platform for the Industrial Internet, and showcase its digital transformation experience. I led the creation of this site, integrating gesoftware.com, the website of the Software COE, geautomation.com, the website of GEIP, as well as software solutions from across GE’s vast enterprise.

With GE’s annual Minds + Machines conference looming, the project was squeezed into a 3 month timeframe, including selection of a technical partner, a task force to gather information and develop web copy from across GE’s businesses, and an internal IT group to help host the final site. The new site would emphasize the scale of GE’s software development teams and explore how software and digital transformation were critical to win in today’s business environment.

Solution:

Web Challenges

Strategies

  • Develop engaging web functionality
  • Implement contact mechanisms
  • Determine lead scoring
  • Integrate with Marketing/Sales platforms
  • Implement strong CMS for easy site management
  • Build on web strength from other GE sites, prior sites
  • Develop KPIs and analytics

Content & Design

Strategies

  • Incorporate industry messaging
  • Create editorial calendars
  • Recruit blog authors
  • Develop storytelling framework and materials
  • Develop social strategies
  • Create new UX/UI incorporating GE brand

Launch:

With 3 weeks left to go, the decision was made to host the site on the ge.com domain, reinforcing GE’s new brand message of becoming a Digital Industrial.  New navigation was developed to integrate the two previously separate sites.  The push was on for final content, design and materials. New documents and videos were in final stages of completion. the site was launched late on a Friday, when visitor traffic was low to reduce the number of visitors seeing a Site under maintenance message.

GE’s annual Minds + Machines event was held 3 days after site launch. The new website reinforced the announcement of GE Digital and added immediate authenticity and strength to this new GE division.