Web site redesign, resize and restructure
The project
My company was in the early stages of redesign of our main company web site after a major rebranding effort.
The Research Question
The site design and structure hadn’t been updated in over a decade. Content needed to be weeded, rebranded, and restructured for usability and findability. The site was also moving from one with no search functionality to having search, making content tagging necessary as well.
My role
On this project, I was responsible for research and imlementation of information architecture changes and content mangement.
Methodology
Content Inventory
A content inventory was performed on the current site, and meetings were held with business subject matter experts from each of the different areas to rank the importance of each piece of content and the rebranding effort for those pieces of content that would definitely be moving in the initial release.
Do-Go Mapping
At the same time, a do-go map was being created to help determine the structure of the new site based on our business objectives and our previously created personas for our different user types.
Tree Testing
Three times throughout the process, we tree tested our Information Architecture using Optimal Workshop’s TreeJack software and using the results to modify our architecture to meet the nees of the users.
Results and Insights
Site structure was revised, though not dramatically changed from the initial site. We learned that the exercise will sometimes show you that your general structure is sound and simply needs tweaks.
Content was initially pared to approximately half the amount of pages, and content was all updated for the new brand.
Search has performed quite well on the site and all content was tagged for search optimization as well as Search Engine Optimization.