Background

Prior to engaging us, the American Red Cross website consisted of three different platforms hodgepodged together over 15+ years.

All attempts to adhere to standards for design components, information architecture patterns, and content style had long since been abandoned.

As my team and I worked to "lift-and-shift" the site, it became clear that the existing pages were not structured well enough to fit the rigid requirements of the new Adobe AEM environment. These requirements also meant creating needed a more intuitive way for Red Cross content producers to publish content.

Business Impact

The American Red Cross derives its revenue from donations of blood, money, and time. Increases in donations are correlated with disasters. Timely news surrounding the effects of disasters and humanitarian aid is critical to motivating site visitors to donate.

Understanding the audience's motivation is critical to moving them down the "purchasing" funnel.

Challenges

• Identify, extend, and create user journeys through the site to streamline and reduce friction along the marketing funnel
• Provide a unified information architecture + content strategy across the three organizational divisions' websites
• Identify recommendations and guidance for content governance work.
• Identify the most commonly visited and highest ROI-generating pages
• Reduce 100,000+ pages to a more manageable 150 pages
• Identify most common workflows between pages to understand how each persona typically moves down the funnel
• Identify the common content patterns based on user value, rhetorical messaging, business intent

Method

1. Kickoff meeting with client to understand business objectives
2. Conduct a true intent survey to identify visitor and donor personas
   1. Write survey
   2. Conduct survey
3. Synthesize data
   1. Identify common and distinct persona motivations, expectations, and pain points