Comprehensive UX Research

Before we began identifying solutions to the problem, we conducted a 3 month discovery sprint to validate the client team's assumptions about the needed solution. To inform our strategy, we conducted a wide range of both direct and indirect UX research, intended to gain a holistic view of the customer experience with Chesapeake Employers, including learning who their users are, understanding their current process and which parts of it could be modified/improved, and identifying the set of technologies that enable them to deliver experiences to their customers. Our discovery research consisted of: Stakeholder Interviews/Focus Groups We conducted 2 full days of on-site interviews with the Chesapeake Employers team to better understand the business and the various teams' needs that might be accounted for within the redesign. The main client contacts selected their stakeholder team, making sure to include senior leadership and relevant parties from each business unit to identify current pain points, ideal-state vision, and necessary business requirements. Each interview included 2-3 people of complementary roles from the relevant as a focus group who had polled the rest of their team to understand pain points in their current workflows. Heuristic Analysis We conducted a UX audit of the existing site to identify alignment with NNG's 10 Heuristics for User Interface Design. Our analysis was primarily intended to inform preliminary usability recommendations, which were then further informed by additional UX research findings. Analytics Review We reviewed their existing website analytics to determine which content was driving users to the site, which content was keeping users on the site, and which content was driving users off site. We also sought to identify key user paths/flows through the site to simplify and increase visibility of those key flows. This review also helped us prioritize our key findings by overall visibility and impact to customers. Competitive Analysis Our client shared 3 competitors that they believed were strongest in the field, and wanted us to provide a formal analysis of those companies' websites. In delivering that analysis, we identified that 2 of the 3 competitors identified had similarly outdated website designs, so we expanded the audit to an informal list of 21 competitor/comparator websites to broaden our design inspiration, and collect feedback to guide the design team during concepting. User Interviews We conducted phone interviews with 8 users to learn more about how they currently use the site, identify any content needs not yet met, and uncover functionality recommendations. In these interviews, we were also able to validate findings from our secondary research, to ensure those recommendations would actually benefit users. Through these interviews, we were able to identify major differences in how their government customers do business with Chesapeake Employers, even so much as to use a different name for the division within the company (IWIF).

Synthesizing our Research Findings

To begin laying the foundation for our website strategy and keep the team aligned on user needs as we begin building, we consolidated our research findings into personas and journey maps and facilitated discussions with the stakeholder team around these artifacts to ensure overall team consensus. Personas We built 8 personas for the various audiences who used the Chespeake Employers website. We were unfortunately not able to capture all user groups, so we stuck to the 8 main persona segments that we could identify easily from the interviews. These segments were primarily based on the user's role at their current company, for instance, we had separate personas for Risk Managers and Employers/HR even though they are both typically in charge of safety protocols, injury reporting, and policy renewals, because larger companies often had someone with a specialized role around workplace safety while smaller organizations often employed more of an HR generalist to manage workplace safety as a facet of their role. Journey Maps We created 2 journey maps for key persona segments to visualize the entire customer experience from initial awareness through injury reporting and into policy renewal. We were able to consolidate the 8 personas into two main customer journeys, as the overall journeys were . Feature Recommendations Doc To facilitate a discussion on necessary functionality for the new website, we prepared a PPT deck of website technical recommendations based on our discovery findings.

Sitemapping & Taxonomy Strategy

With an approved strategy, we began to build the information architecture with a focus on well-organized groupings of content labelled in ways users could understand that could scale as the Chesapeake Employers team grew into their new site. Content Audit & Inventory To help build out the sitemap, we took stock of every page we could find within the website ecosystem and provided a template to the client team for auditing, archiving, and updating it all before site launch. Within the content audit document, we included notes for the top 40 pages with the most pageviews to demonstrate the types of information the content team should collect as they're building their work. Sitemap During the sitemapping phase, we made names more familiar to users instead of reflective of internal terminology, chunked content into more intuitive and findable groupings, and began to visualize the site's navigation. Content Playbook We created our content playbook to visualize and agree on content types and page hierarchy without focusing on layout/design. Our content playbook served as a high-level snapshot of each page template in order to get initial client feedback earlier than wireframes and designs, and minimize costly feedback later in the process. Once approved by the client team, this playbook served as a guide for the design team to begin wireframes and visual designs. Taxonomy Strategy We prepared a taxonomy and tagging strategy to enable dynamic content structures throughout the site and begin laying the groundwork for personalization. Usability Testing Once wireframes were complete, we conducted usability testing on key flows through the new site experience to identify areas for improvement and iterate on the layout as we moved into visual design. Read about our usability tests ➝

Defining the Structure and Substance of Content

Once the wireframes were complete and the designs were underway, we were able to shift UX attention to focus on preparing the content team to begin the website migration. Core Content Strategy To ensure all drafted content is consistent with the website brand and strategy, we drafted a document to serve as the entire Chesapeake Employers team's core content strategy for the website, inclusive of goals & KPIs, content topics & themes, CTAs, voice and tone, brand proposition, etc. Because our clients were stronger at writing marketing copy for brochures and not well versed in writing for the web, we included an appendix of 'Writing for the Web' best practices. Content Authoring Guides To facilitate content gathering and component mapping, we created a content authoring guide for each page template. As the author begins to revise the content based on the Core Content Strategy, the authoring guide serves as a content brief that documents all relevant information needed to complete a piece of content, including assets needed, component selection and character limits, and dynamically populated content that doesn't need to be authored. URL Mapping To facilitate SEO efforts, we translated our sitemap from a visual format to a spreadsheet that included both the past URL and the proposed URL for the content to make sure page slugs were identified and content hierarchies remained intact.

Developing a Strategy for Targeted Content Delivery

We identified specific components on the site that could be used to deliver personalized experiences, as well as potential content types to include in those components. Our personalization strategy included:

• education on personalization
• identification of key personalization segments and tactics, especially those easily attainable by rudimentary personalization systems
• specific pages of the website to personalize
• inclusion of both journey based and attribute based personalization opportunities.