Re-architecting back to school

Interactive Designer @ 3M in 2016

Context

In 2016 Post-it® Brand was pivoting their digital business model to be more centered around content creation and user generated content. This was a change from their disparate ecosystem of paid media landing pages and micro sites making it challenging to support users moving organically through the content and keeping them on the site as-is.

I saw an opportunity to re-organize and enhance the architecture and design of the site to better support this change, and partnered with the technology team to put together a proposal.

Objectives

  • Key platforms and content are not easily accessible to the user because they live within campaign pages that aren’t part of our main navigation, making it difficult to navigate through our site

  • Complex and inconsistent tagging system that is limiting our ability to feature all of our articles

  • Relying on homepage carousel to navigate to key platforms and content

Traffic for a campaign that is only accessible through paid media advertisements

Traffic for the “Ideas” homepage that’s always accessible through the website

Proposal

  1. Re-organize key platform pages under “Ideas” in the main navigation

    • (2-3 weeks for development)

  2. Focus and simplify the tagging system

    • (5-6 weeks for development)

  3. Re-design homepage

    • (1-2 weeks for development)

Goals

  • Enhanced user experience and ease of navigating the site

  • Reduce the complexity of the tagging system

  • Create a stronger presence for key platforms

  • Increase organic traffic and decrease site bounces

Sitemap updates

Original

In this sitemap, the key platform pages live separately from the main navigation. As well as a few pages that are floating in the ether that are no longer a priority for the business and have stopped being supported.

Proposed changes

In this proposed sitemap the key platform pages are moved up into the main navigation under “Ideas” under appropriate pillars, and the pages that are no longer supported have been removed.

Navigation

Re-organize campaign pages under “Ideas” in the main navigation

  • Bring key platforms into navigation and organizing under brand pillars

  • Cohesively organizing content

  • Creating better user experience to better navigate through the site

  • Expanded navigation will
 appear on all dropdowns

  • Long term opportunity to expand Product Catalog navigation

Tags

Limit to 4 pillars as primary tags

  • Reduces complexity of tags and manual work

  • Consistent tagging structure

  • Ability to create pages with a mixture of product/campaign articles

  • No longer use tiles to differentiate between key platforms, relying on the landing page to show unique characteristics

Original primary tag list

  1. Connections (pillar)

  2. Productivity (pillar)

  3. Creativity (pillar)

  4. Education (pillar)

  5. Collaboration (platform)

  6. Office Organization (platform)

  7. Study (platform)

  8. Dry Erase Surface (product)

  9. Color (product)

Proposed primary tag list

  1. Connections (pillar)

  2. Productivity (pillar)

  3. Creativity (pillar)

  4. Education (pillar)

Primary tag: Determines color and title of tile

Homepage

Re-designed homepage

  • Eliminated carousel

  • White background to stay consistent with site aesthetic

  • Highlighted key programs simultaneously

  • Titling for clearer content labeling

  • Eases maintenance of homepage

  • Improves page load time

Argument against carousels

  • Often user immediately scrolls past these large images, missing essential secondary information

  • Less than 1% of visitors click on a carousel

  • Consumer Business Group (CBG) trending with industry best practices, several other iconic branded sites have foregone the usage of carousels

  • Accessibility issues for keyboard and screen readers, not supportive of universal design

  • Significant issues in mobile environment

  • Increases page load time

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