Posts tagged: Website audit

Freeview Information architecture

August 18th, 2008

Whilst working as a freelance Information Architect at Grand Union I was responsible for developing the new information architecture for the forthcoming redesigned Freeview website. My work included competitor analysis, auditing the existing website and its content and meeting with the client to discuss the needs and objectives of both the business and users.

I delivered a new sitemap and wireframes that incorporated my recommendations for content, layout and technological development. These deliverables were used by both the client and the project team to develop the new site.

Deliverables

  • Hierarchical sitemap
  • Website audit
  • Wireframes

URL: http://www.freeview.co.uk/

Freeview sitemap

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Together London Limited

August 17th, 2008

I have recently been in discussions with Together London about collaborating with them on forthcoming web projects. The idea behind the company is to put together a team of highly-skilled individuals who work together in a flexible and more efficient way. By being more agile, cutting out a lot of the inefficiencies that occur in larger agencies we can deliver higher quality projects, more quickly and cheaply.

URL: http://www.togetherlondon.com/

Together London

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Amazon.co.uk redesign to (not quite) Web standards

May 19th, 2008

Over the past few months Amazon have been tweaking their existing site to improve the design and user experience. They have done a good job, but I couldn’t help but notice that they have only gone half the way to using Web standards in their redesign efforts. Here’s a little (non-exhaustive) summary of what they are missing:

  • The HTML isn’t really that semantic, if you remove the style sheet the content doesn’t really flow that well - a(ccessibility barrier to non-graphical browsers)
  • No DOCTYPE to inform browsers of what version of HTML they are using
  • A huge amount of page specific CSS and JavaScript, could this have been moved into an external file to be reused elsewhere?
  • They are STILL using tables for content and page layout - very inflexible, non-semantic and harder to update, increases code to content ratio (lowers SEO - although Amazon are all over SEO)
  • Page design doesn’t scale well when you increase the font size
  • No use of access keys or tab indexes so a user can’t tab logically through the navigation
  • No use of skip to content or skip navigation links

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon still provides a great online shopping experience, but you have thought that if they had gone to the trouble of redesigning their site they would have taken a few lessons out of Yahoo’s book and gone down the full Web standards route.

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Rated People competitor analysis

April 29th, 2008

Rated People is an online service to find domestic tradesmen such as plumbers, electricians and builders in your local area. Companies can create a profile on the site and then bid for work. Customers can advertise a job and then get in contact with the appropriate contractor. I was asked to conduct a speculative audit of the site and its key competitor.

Deliverables

  • Competitor analysis

Rated People User experience analysis
Downloads: rated_people_uxp_analysis.pdf

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London Capital Group website redesign

April 29th, 2008

Overview

The London Capital Group wanted to redesign their existing website and part of that process was to create an audit report covering the following areas

  • Target audiences
  • Analytics and tracking
  • Search engine positioning
  • Functionality
  • Visual design
  • Front-end technologies
  • Usability
  • Accessibility
  • Site architecture

Deliverables

  • Website audit
  • Sitemap
  • Homepage content architecture

Client goals

To get a better understanding of how to improve their website and what areas in particular required the most attention.

Challenges overcome

The client was very new to IA and so a lot of hand-holding was required throughout the auditing and recommendation phases. The client was also quite slow to feedback on key deliverables slowing down the project and making it hard to keep momentum going.

Downloads: lcg_website_audit lcg_site_architecture

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