Principles of Website Design Case Studies: USDA.gov

1
Principles of Website DesignCase Studies
USDA.gov FSIS.USDA.gov

• Janet B. Stevens, PMP
• Director, Web Services
• Food Safety Inspection Service/USDA
• Janet.Stevens_at_fsis.usda.gov

2
Redesign Challenges

• Agencies and offices have established web sites
  with different designs that grew organically
• Many dont have reliable methods to understand
  their audiences or site performance
• Most dont have governance models or budgets
• Web managers are split across OCIO/PA staffs
• Management often doesnt understand what it takes
  to manage a site successfully or how sites
  support the mission

3
Redesign Solutions

• Establish a common look and feel collaboratively,
  but avoid design by committee.
• Learn about your users and apply best practices.
• Plan to acquire resources.
• Develop governance models and strategic plans
• Link your performance measures to your agencys
  goals and market how the site supports the
  mission
• Ask for what you need
• Market how managing a web site is a
  mission-critical communications function IT
  supports it.
• Consider management a stakeholder and target
  audience group. Learn how they like to receive
  information and make decisions.

4
How USDA.gov Did It

• Agencies participated as a team
• Met weekly and learned about our target audience
  groups and missions
• Participated in developing the information
  architecture, metadata model, tools and design
• Observed usability testing
• Created the first departmental style guide
• Resulted in the first USDA audience analysis
  document and audience personas(http//www.webcont
  ent.gov/documents/USDA_Audience_Analysis.pdf)

5
Putting It All Together Personas
6
Before and After

• USDA.gov General site

7
The FSIS Redesign
8
FSIS Satisfaction Survey

• Benchmarking results (64 to 71)
• Segmenting visitors
• Developing custom questions
• Using the information
• Setting goals
• Making your rep part of your team

9
Survey What We Learnedby Frequency of Site Use

• Visitor snapshot
• First timers 25.5
• 1x/week 25.2
• Daily 21.6
• 1x/month 15.0
• 6 months or less 6.5
• gt1x/day 6.2

• Segmentation revealed
• First timers were the most satisfied
• The redesign is well-received by new users, a
  critical success point
• Frequent users were still adjusting to the new
  design
• Actions
• Marketing and promotion targeted to frequent
  users to improve satisfaction and acceptance of
  design

10
Survey What We Learnedby Audience Type

• Visitor snapshot
• Consumers/Educators 33.3
• Employees 28.4
• Businesses/Partners 21.6
• Scientists/Researchers 12.1
• Constituent Groups 4.6

• Segmentation revealed
• Most satisfied consumers/educators
  constituent groups
• Least satisfied Employees, biz partners,
  scientists/researchers
• Employees were looking for internal information
  not on the site launched intranet June 1.
• Actions
• Launch marketing and training on both sites for
  employees
• Add audience portal for partners
• Learn more about researchers

11
Top 5 What Theyre Looking For

• Food safety education 29.1
• Regulations policies 19.6
• Recall information 10.1
• Career/job information 9.8
• Food security emergency preparedness 6.5
• Segmentation revealed
• Most satisfied Finding recall and import/export
  info
• Least satisfied Finding regs policies and
  contact info

12
What Theyre Looking For

• Actions
• Learn more about how visitors navigate
• Browse by Subject (Left Navigation) 31.7
• News or Spotlight Fact Sheets on the home page
  28.1
• Embedded Links in text 17.3
• Browse by Audience Drop-Down (Left Navigation)
  8.2
• Clicking on images (promotional ads) 4.6
• Right Navigation Bar 3.6
• Global Navigation Buttons at the top of the page
  3.3
• I Want To... (Right Navigation) 3.3
• Market global and right navigation areas
  (improving w/each sample)
• Retest navigation with visitors in 2006

13
Targeting Our Efforts

• Search was consistently our lowest score
• We verified that the disatisfaction was with our
  internal search engine
• Deployed Google this summer
• Search scores are up!

14
Using Web Statistics

• Annual site statistics support the site as
  mission critical
• Visitors 5,953,867 (48 unique)
• Page views 21,386,651 (avg. 3.59 views/visitor)
• Hits 148,027,165
• Real-time stats tie agency campaigns to user
  behavior changes
• Recent uses were for Katrina releases and fact
  sheets and IsItDoneYet.gov thermometer campaign
• Internet Explorer 87 of visits
• Annual non-IE visits 557,995 (Netscape, Opera,
  WebTV, Safari, etc.)
• We cant leave over a half million visitors
  behind
• International visitors 16.38
• Top WAP devices Sony Ericcson and Kyocera

15
Main Design Elements Top

• Branding area
• Dynamic if users have Flash static if they dont
• Rotates through the 5 main areas of our
  mission
• Top navigation bar
• Main, non-subject area parts of our site

16
Main Design Elements Left

• Search
• Usability testing revealed users wanted it top
  left
• Can search entire site, sections of the site
  only, or all USDA sites from drop-down
• Uses Google

• By Audience
• Main audience groups have their own portal page

• By Subject
• Main subject areas customers access most

17
Main Design Elements Right

• Page navigation
• Each subpage has navigation links particular to
  that page
• Intention-based design
• I Want Tos list the top actions visitors want to
  do from that page or section
• Relevant rotating ads

18
Main Design Elements Center

• Breadcrumb trail
• Mission statement
• Main news stories
• In the News lists latest agency information on
  mission-related topics
• Spotlights
• Seasonal fact sheets and information

19
Main Design Elements Bottom

• Sitewide notices, policies, and links
• Much more effectiveand manageable thanthe icon
  forest (the Las Vegas Effect)of older designs

20
Before and After
21
Presentation Resources

• USDA Audience Analysishttp//www.webcontent.gov/
  documents/USDA_Audience_Analysis.pdf
• FSIS Style Guide http//www.webcontent.gov/docume
  nts/FSIS_Styleguide.pdf
• This presentation will be posted to
  WebContent.gov
• Contact meJanet.Stevens_at_fsis.usda.gov