Making an iMpact: redesigning a business school Web site around performance metrics

  • Authors:
  • Tom Brinck;Seunghee S. Ha;Nick Pritula;Kara Lock;Alfred Speredelozzi;Mike Monan

  • Affiliations:
  • Diamond Bullet Design, Ann Arbor, MI;Usability Specialist;Creative Director;Information Architect;Usability Engineer;Project Director

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Designing for user experiences
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

The University of Michigan Business School went through a substantial redesign in 2002--2003 of their site of over 3,000 pages, with a focus on increased ease of use, clean, professional design, improved branding, reduction of Web sprawl, and integration of their public site with their intranet, called ì iMpact.î The site serves a range of users with varying needs, including faculty, students, staff, alumni, prospective students, media, and recruiters.Our redesign process was grounded in a metrics-based user testing approach that set targets for various measurements, such as task completion rate, and compared these to usersí performance on their previous site and the sites of their competitors. Task completion rate, for instance, went from 61.7% on their former site to 92.5% on the final redesigned site. Continuous testing provided detailed feedback, and measurement enabled us to reduce project risks while demonstrating substantial improvements versus competitorsí Web sites.