Overview
Give people the clarity they need to assess relevance, understand value, and decide whether to proceed to deeper evaluation.
Answer the key questions people have during evaluation to reduce uncertainty and build confidence before they commit to deeper exploration.
Help them understand the value without overwhelming them — by providing clear context, relevant proof points, and guided paths that enable confident, informed decisions.
Ensure they can evaluate your solution through channels that match their context and preferences — including self‑service options like peer review sites, IBM communities, the IBM.com Concierge AI assistant, marketplaces, social media, and YouTube, as well as sales‑assisted channels such as demos and conversations with product and sales teams.
Measures of success
Use these metrics to evaluate how quickly people assess relevance, understand value, and decide to continue exploring your solution.
To evaluate the effectiveness of the Learn experience, teams should measure engagement with key product content, their understanding of the value, and their progression to deeper evaluation such as a free trial, sales-led demo, sales conversation, or purchase.
Metric | IBM goal | |
|---|---|---|
Time to qualification signal | Time from arriving on product page to other hand-raising moment (live demo request, pricing inquiry, content download, contacting sales, etc) | <10 minutes |
Qualified traffic engagement rate | % of product page visitors who engage with high-value content | 20-40% |
Time to trial registration | Time from arriving on product page to successful trial registration | <5 minutes |
Trial registration rate | % of engaged product page visitors who register for a trial | 10% |
Key moments
The Learn experience is a sequence of moments in which people move from identifying your product as a possible solution to deciding to move forward with a hands-on evaluation.
Design these moments to answer key evaluation questions, reinforce value, and help potential customers decide whether to continue to deeper evaluation.
Support this journey across touchpoints such as product content, peer reviews, product community discussions, documentation, AI assistants, interactive demos, free trials, and conversations with product experts.
When teams align on key value moments and design them as a cohesive journey, customers progress smoothly, understanding increases, and intent strengthens.
Key moment | Definition | Touchpoints | How to optimize |
|---|---|---|---|
Understand value What does this actually do? | When potential customers evaluate what the product does, the problem it solves, and the outcomes it enables. | – Product landing page on IBM.com – Product listing on a hyperscaler marketplace – Product overview videos or demos – Outcome-focused messaging – Use case pages | – Clearly explain the product’s purpose, target customers (companies) and users (professionals), core use cases, and expected outcomes – Help potential customers understand value quickly without requiring deep product knowledge |
Assess fit Will this work for me? | When potential customers determine whether the product fits their use case, workflow, environment, role, industry, or existing tool stack. | – Integrations section – Realistic workflows, examples, demos, or product documentation – Industry or role-specific pages – Compatibility and deployment information – Solution architecture examples – Sales conversations | – Show how the product fits into real workflows and environments – Provide clear examples, integrations, and realistic usage scenarios – Make requirements, compatibility, and deployment options easy to understand |
Build trust Can I trust this solution? | When potential customers look for evidence that the product is credible, secure, reliable, and proven. | – Security, trust, and compliance information – Customer logos and testimonials – Case studies and implementation stories – Analyst recognition and ratings – Peer reviews and marketplace ratings – Sales-led demo | – Reinforce credibility with customer outcomes, case studies, and testimonials – Highlight security, compliance, and reliability proof points – Use analyst validation, ratings, and peer reviews to build confidence |
Evaluate feasibility Can I realistically adopt it? | When potential customers assess whether they can realistically adopt the product based on cost, requirements, implementation effort, support availability, and constraints. | – Pricing and packaging – Operating requirements – Deployment options – Documentation – Virtual chat, AI assistant, or sales support – Sales-led POC | – Clearly communicate pricing, packaging, and expected effort – Reduce uncertainty around setup, integration, and ongoing operation – Show what’s required to get started and what support is available |
Build confidence Am I ready to move forward? | When potential customers have enough clarity, trust, and feasibility information to decide whether to continue to deeper evaluation — either to a trial, demo, sales conversation, or purchase path. | – Calls-to-action – Trial or demo entry points – Comparison pages – Buyer guides – ROI/value calculators – Sales or partner contact options | – Help customers choose the right next step based on readiness – Provide clear paths to trial, demo, sales, or deeper exploration – Use strong, relevant calls to action to guide progression – Help customers feel confident that IBM is a safe and trusted choice |