Background

The existing site suffered from inconsistencies in lay-out, typography, color, information architecture, content hierarchy, and user flow. This ultimately impacted the site visitor, which analytics showed were getting lost consistently. To remedy this, my team and I worked to standardize the layout and styling of the site, and to provide training and documentation to content producers to adhere to best practices when creating pages.

Challenges

• Derive a standard set of functional AEM components and page templates to
• Enable content creators to create and publish pages themselves, without having to rely on development colleagues
• Serve as starting points for content creators to add or subtract components when authoring new pages
• Improve the site information architecture by embedding taxonomical information in the components and templates
• Simplify content authoring through a plug-and-play model
• Offer content creators recommendations on what components and templates to use based on the situation
• Deliver instruction materials to Red Cross's content creators on best practices for leveraging the new components and templates, as well as teaching them how to move of visitors to and through the donation funnel

Method

1. Kickoff meeting with internal and external stakeholders to understand business objectives
2. Write discussion guide
3. 1:1 interviews with content publishers about their existing publication practices
4. Synthesize data
5. Create standardized components and publishing rules
6. Present findings and final design to stakeholders