sarah rice - ia summit 2004 bottom-up information architecture: re-design of an enterprise class web...
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Sarah Rice - IA Summit 2004
Bottom-Up Information Architecture:
Re-Design of an Enterprise Class Web Site
VeriSign, Inc
In business since 1995 Network Infrastructure: provide
security for Internet and Communication transactions
Acquired a number of companies in a short period of time
VeriSign Web Properties Team
Within Corporate Marketing Web Properties has 2 segments
Engineering Web Publishing
Producers HTML developers
IA was brought in as a consulting role for site re-design project
The Problem
Organically grown web site Conglomeration of numerous different
sites Normalization process was done, but it was
a band-aid for a patient on life support Broken Navigation Useless search Static web pages. Updated manually by
web team.
Findability Issues! Users were unable to find needed
content Surveys revealed that customers felt
like hostages on the web site Search was practically useless Not inspiring confidence with the user
experience Content lacked substance
Solution
Re-architect and re-design web site from the bottom up
Implement content management system (CMS)
Improve search
Consultant Advisory Board
Peter Morville – Information Architecture
Bob Boiko – Content Management Avi Rappoport – Search
About Me
I was tasked with taking the advisor’s suggestions and implementing them
Information Architect consultant with 8 years experience
Trained in Library and Information Sciences
3 main objectives: Create metadata schema to improve
search and implement CMS Develop controlled vocabularies
needed for metadata Content types Products and services
Create templates for CMS Improve navigation and layout Support CMS implementation
Site Re-Design
Business Requirements Content analysis Audience analysis Competitive analysis Visual design Specification Implementation (within the CMS)
Business Requirements Support users in every phase of
the customer lifecycle Provide consistent navigation and
page layout Support the company’s brand Develop a metadata structure that
supports information management and findability
Content Analysis
Formulated list of content types Gathered representative examples
of all content types Analyzed content, user needs and
business requirements for each content type
Formulated specifications for some content types
Audience Analysis Gathered information about users from
Site Satisfaction Survey Interviewing product groups and support
organizations Different user groups for different products Systematic approach for gathering data
Mapped audience type to each product group, identified necessary content required for each phase of customer lifecycle
Data analyzed to surface patterns
Competitive Analysis
Different aspects of information architecture were analyzed Navigation Search Page layout
Analysis based on industry, type of content and size of business
Visual Design Outside agency brought in Bottom-up IA analysis drove the visual
design They also performed a brief top-down
analysis New navigation scheme was adopted Representative templates were
developed to showcase new design system
Specification
Mapped all content to the new templates
Individual pages defined All elements for pages were
specified
Content Management System
Goals Provide a distributed publishing
model throughout the company while maintaining consistency and control over UI and navigation
Allow for easier updates and changes to the web site (reduce cost)
Implement metadata
CMS Implementation
Inventoried content Developed corporate taxonomy Provided style sheet and
wireframes for all templates Developed detailed site map for all
content
CMS Templates
Mapped current content to existing templates
Created new templates where required, providing wireframes and style sheet
Outlined revised publishing system and governance rules, based on CMS capabilities, business needs and company culture
Metadata
Developed specifications for the Resource Library, a central repository and search interface for the company’s digital resources
Metadata-driven search with multiple entry points throughout the web site
Search Improved technical aspects of search
Updated software Configured server Mirrored indexing
Improved user interface Removed unnecessary information for users Refined key word in context highlighting Changed navigation Added usable verbiage Reformatted promotional information
Search Added Quick Links feature (commonly
called best bets) Improved quality of search results data
Weighted more relevant information Trained content owners in constructing
page titles and creating useful metadata Defined process for continued analysis
of search traffic reports to monitor, update and improve search results as needed.
Results
Corporate section of web site to go live May 19, 2004
Site traffic will be analyzed and compared to baseline statistics. Hope to see 20% improvement in site traffic and user satisfaction.
Lessons Learned Site Re-Design and CMS Implementation
Huge undertaking: both done simultaneously It was vital that the project be done this way The re-design was primarily a re-architecture of
the existing site It would have doubled the work and probably
would have sabotaged the success of the project to do the CMS implementation first and site redesign second.
It was imperative to provide a solid and extensible information infrastructure for the company’s growth into the next 5-8 years.
Resources Learned that is was important to rely on
existing expertise in the company rather than import a lot of temporary, external help.
Doing this made this an 18 month long project Helpful, given the complex nature of the
business and its information needs (it wasn’t easy to bring new people up to speed in order for them to do their job effectively).
All the above reasons made this a purely bottom-up IA project
Pure Bottom-Up IA
Bottom-up was required All previous top-down efforts had
failed Complex business Unstable, constantly changing landscape Limited resources
Successful completion of all project goals and objectives!