Netsimco Website
Developing A Website & Information Architecture For A Government Agency with a focus in Wargaming
The Development
Preparations
The development for this project was surprisingly similar to a traditional web build, with only a few minor differences & restrictions. When doing regular intake with the stakeholders we went over important KPM’s, it was to my surprise in the value the company had held in regular news articles. The reason that this was surprising is because the previous site had no CTA’s that directed users to interact with the news section, and they were also not utilizing socials to announce their accomplishments.
User Research
Doing user research & testing revealed that my initial assumptions about the primary users were in fact true. The main user demographics all pointed to individuals aged between 45-60 years old, with military affiliations that oversee operational teams. With this information in mind we had utilized slightly larger than average typography on the site, and used direct language when describing the benefits of the company.
The Design
Surprisingly the design limitations on this build we’re minimal, the stakeholders that collaborated on the project were more than happy to entrust our design decisions. That being said the content on the site was not up for negotiation, and we found ourselves with some very large paragraphs that needed to be broken down into meaningful chunks. This made utilizing larger fonts more challenging, and balancing text to image ratios became a challenge.
Key Takeaways
User Traffic
Website traffic increased by 50% within the next 6 months due to organic traffic optimizations. During the sites development, we were tasked with handling the websites SEO which allowed us to create headings that were both valuable to the user but also picked up by Google’s algorithm.
Time On Page
Users engagement increased roughly 20% due to the content being more organized and legible. After clearly eliminating a user pain point we continued to run small optimization tests on the site to make sure that we we’re hitting the mark, and releasing news articles to keep the content on the site fresh.
Form Submissions
User form submissions went up roughly 7%, after the increase in overall user traffic. Outside of discoverability, increasing use of forms throughout the site and CTA’s brought more users to conversion areas across the website.
Contracts Secured
Since the launch date of the new site, the company has seen further success within new government contracts, acquisitions of new companies, and visibility online. Although there are multiple factors that attribute to this, the KPI’s on the website are solid measurements of overall success.
Project Summery
I would consider this project successful, I was satisfied with the outcomes that the new development produced and overall the client values the decisions that were made. The new structure promotes their other branches of service well, and the increased exposure definitely contributed to their increased contracts. I would recommend some more original photography, however that didn’t fit the clients budget or interest.
