An inside look at the user-focused redesign of the American Action Forum's website.

1. How To Build A User-Focused Site
Lessons Learned From Redesigning AmericanActionForum.org
Eric Wilson
Digital Director
American Action Forum
New Media Exchange – September 13, 2013

2. Our partner on this project, Viget, deserves tremendous credit for
the creativity in the solutions presented here.

3. AmericanActionForum.org – January 2013

4. Anecdotally, we knew we needed to redesign
our website because…
The visual design felt dated
We weren’t able to highlight content how we wanted to
Our site wasn’t attracting & retaining key audiences
It was difficult to find & discover relevant research

5. It’s important to re-cast the complaints about
your current site as positive goals. Otherwise,
you’ll just end up with an ‘improved’ version of
your old website rather than solutions to
achieve your goals.

6. In positive terms, we wanted our new website
to
Highlight our most important, relevant content
Make all of our content easier to discover
Increase repeat visits and time on site
Make the site visually appealing on all devices

7. We decided from the outset that we would
achieve these goals by focusing on providing
the best possible experiences for the various
target audiences visiting our site.

8. Beyond our own opinions & anecdotal
evidence, we turned to our site analytics to
learn what we could improve about our site.

9. Our assumptions about how users were
navigating the site were wrong…

10. 56% of visits landed on an article or expert
page. 80% of these visits bounced.
That’s a 21% higher bounce rate than the
average visit.

11. We were successfully driving traffic to our site
through our outreach efforts (e.g. social &
email), but we weren’t giving them a reason to
stick around. Nor did we let them know who
we are or where they were in our site.

12. 45% of our internal site search queries were for
terms that could be categorized as granular
issue topics.

13. • Fiscal Cliff
• Social Security
• Unemployment
• Jobs
• Sequestration
• Medicare
• Affordable Care Act
• Medicare Advantage
• Individual Mandate
• Medicaid Expansion
Here’s what users were searching for on our site…

14. • Economy • Health Care
But here’s how we categorized the content.

15. We were imposing an information architecture
on our users that made sense to us (and
reflected our internal organization) – not what
would help our users find the content they
wanted.

16. Traffic from “high-value” audiences is more than twice as likely
to come via email.

17. Mobile visits to the site grew from 8.8% in
April 2012 to 15.1% in March 2013.

18. But this is what our site looked like on an
iPhone.

19. CHALLENGE
Highlight our most important, relevant content.

20. Not every issue area we cover is always in the
news.
Why not let users determine (through
pageviews) the issue topics we highlight?

21. SOLUTION
Trending Topics

22. SOLUTION
Trending Topics

23. SOLUTION
Trending Topics

24. SOLUTION
Trending Topics

25. SOLUTION
Trending Topics

26. CHALLENGE
Make all of our content easier to discover.

27. SOLUTION I
Flatter Information Architecture
A new, open taxonomy for categorizing
content. Users can search & filter content
based on issue topic tags.
175 unique topic tags & growing.

28. SOLUTION II
A Better Search Experience

29. SOLUTION III
New Content Types

30. SOLUTION III
New Content Types
Additional content types – Quotes, Infographics, What We’re Reading &
Serialized Products – allow us to highlight the full breadth of our content.
They also enable us to highlight key research multiple times, ensuring our most
important initiatives are highlighted in the news feed.

31. CHALLENGE
Increase the number of repeat visits and time on site.

32. SOLUTION I
The News Feed
Users know immediately what’s new &
important.
Topics & Content Types invite users to explore
more content.

33. SOLUTION II
Related Research

34. SOLUTION III
Email Integration

35. CHALLENGE
Make the site mobile friendly

36. SOLUTION
Responsive Design
Tablet Breakpoint

37. SOLUTION
Responsive Design
Mobile Breakpoint

38. TESTING
We went back to our users to make sure our solutions were on
the right track.

39. You are looking for research from the American Action Forum on Immigration. Where do you look?
74% of participants clicked on something related to research or immigration.

40. DIY
GetChalkmark.com
Online Screenshot Testing Software by Optimal Workshop

41. DIY
Recruit your friends & colleagues of varying backgrounds to
participate in user testing. We reached out to 100+ users
representing 6 different audiences.

42. TESTING
And we continue to test.

43. Does the number of related articles at the end of a post affect the number of clicks on related research?

44. DIY
Optimizely
Easy-to-use Multi-variate Testing

45. LESSON LEARNED
If there’s a disagreement over design – test it.

46. Do we need to call out press in the navigation?
Me: No
Everybody Else: Yes

47. I was wrong.
79% of testers successfully completed the “find press releases” task when it was added.

48. LESSON LEARNED
Educate all of your team on the value of focusing on users.

49. Designing & building a user-focused site is only the first
part of the process. The content we post each day needs
to be user-focused as well.

50. CONTENT GUIDE EXCERPTS
“When linking to a file like a PDF from your post, indicate to the
reader that the link is not a web page by putting the file type [inside
brackets].”
“Give your posts titles that describe the content in a compelling way
and will help a user find what they are looking for if they are
searching.”

51. LESSON LEARNED
Have confidence in your commitment to focusing on users.

52. Shortly before we launched, I started to panic because our site
looked nothing like any other think tank website.
But response has been positive. Anecdotally, users like the
new site and

53. PROGRESS REPORT
Anecdotal feedback has been positive to date and we’ve
seen some viral success.
More time & traffic is needed to gather a full analytics
reporting.

54. But here’s what I’m keeping an eye on:
• Based on internal search queries, are users finding the
content they want?
• Do too many tags on a piece of content confuse users?
• Is there a better way to deal with notation in research
that doesn’t interrupt a user’s reading flow?
• What’s the best article length to keep a user engaged?

56. Despite initial concerns
about the navigation in user
testing, our users seem to
be taking to the new layout
well.

57. Questions?
ewilson@americanactionforum.org
@ericwilson