HGTV Website redesign

Role:  Lead Information Architect
Team: Sapient and Scripps’ clients co-worked on the design, system design and development of the site. By having a close partnership ensured the success and adoption of the project.
Agency: Sapient
Year: 2007

TASK: 
Redesign the HGTV site with the following objectives:

Increase page views
Increase site visitor engagement (popularity,
serendipitous discovery)
Cater to a cross section of content consumption modes (browsing content vs. known-item searching)
Increase opportunities to monetize the channel (site structure is defined to maximize opportunities to increase the visibility of sponsored partner content)
Enhance efficiency in publishing and managing content
Map site features against user personas
Better showcase video
Create an SEO-friendly website

METHOD:
As an information architect I was the lead in charge of creating and documenting the site structure, wireframe layout and component strategy for the redesign.

For the site structure and rules design a team of four people (2 Scripps, 2 Sapient) worked closely on work sessions to define the new paradigm.
Worked closely with the product owners and stakeholders to set product requirements.
Created page navigation, system rules, wireframes, and some key module behaviors
Documented product requirements, functionality specs and content rules.

Creating new digital identity

The new identity included: a new look, improved navigation, a better free experience, greater site engagement (leading to people staying in the site longer), increased traffic (better SEO), subscription product enhancements.

Before the redesign

After the redesign

Design System

A New Site Architecture Par-adigm. The site system that consists of three page types (in addition to the homepage): Section Pages, Topic Pages, and Asset Pages.

Navigation in this system relies predominantly on keyword popularity in combination with the principle of content aggregation. Fundamentally, pages exist in the system as soon
as there are sufficient assets to support the page (see later for Topic Generation Rules). This model of publishing has its merits, as outlined below.

Topics

They are auto-generated
by having 3 asset pages tagged with same keyword (facet)
A topic can be anything ranging from defined facets to manually generated keywords