Sarah Rice - IA Summit 2004

Bottom-Up Information Architecture:

Re-Design of an Enterprise Class Web Site

The Project

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

Before

After After

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.

Before

After

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!

The End