resolving paint points through WEBSITE COntent Design
challenge
Revamp the City of Laguna Beach’s dated website with confusing navigation and too much information. Users visit the City’s 650-page website to accomplish a task or get information, yet doing those things is frustrating. UX research taught us that though our users are diverse, they face similar pain points: they find pages difficult to skim, and don’t understand site organization.
PROPOSAL
Develop a task-oriented, search-driven website with limited plain-language text.
SAMPLE CONTENT SOLUTION
Problem: Research showed that 69% of people who use the City’s website land on an interior page directly, bypassing the home page with a Google search. This transformed our understanding of user behavior and how to build those interior experiences.
Solution: Create content “buckets.” For example, one bucket contained everything about dogs. On the old site a user might need to visit five pages, but I put it all in one place with popular action items in buttons at the top of the page.
How i collaborated
I called myself a sherpa. As content designer and manager, I was responsible for this project, leading the internal team to completion, keeping stakeholders informed, and working with the vendor. I also wrote much of the content.
process
I relied on a design thinking process, nimble project management, and my skill in learning new software to get the job done. I coordinated with content contributors across 15 departments and divisions and dovetailed with the vendor’s development team. I lived in the CMS and used Google Analytics daily. Photo editing software and our DAM were always open on my desktop, and I dabbled with a bit of HTML. I developed taxonomies, established nomenclature, and set up a new IA.
RESULTS
I achieved the design solution we wanted: a task-oriented, search-driven website. We streamlined the content, cut the page count to 322 pages, and established an Information Architecture that tested well with our audience. Cross-departmental and public testing revealed that users found the new site easy-to-use and user-friendly.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY
The power of user testing. I’ve always been a devotee of user testing, but in this case, user research insights swayed stakeholders to adopt a streamlined top nav menu early in the design process, which had a positive cascading effect on the project’s Information Architecture.
This website project does not have a happy ending. The project changed direction under new leadership and will not be going live.
Simple Information Architecture limited choices and used the language our users preferred, like “mudline.”
Note the streamlined top nav on this Home Page with just two choices: Our City and Government. Research told us users don't want to learn our internal terms, so we made sure they could find what they need intuitively. This project did not go live because it changed direction under new leadership. However, I am still proud of our work and everything we accomplished.
A sample “bucket.” Users can now go to one place for permits. On the old site, they would need to know which department issues the permit they need.