The importance of a thorough Discovery phase
Author: Rebecca Martin, Digital Project Manager
The Discovery phase is the most important, yet often initially undervalued, part of a website redevelopment project.
It begins with research, to gain the insight needed to build strong foundations for a digital product. Without this phase a project will struggle to gain direction or momentum. This could cost a lot of time, money and effort in the long-run, and so it’s worth using a decent chunk of budget during this phase.
Three key benefits
- An understanding of your existing audience:
a. Who the existing audience is
b. How users are currently using the website
c. What the existing user experience issues are
d. Which content is performing well and which could perform better - A new strategic direction:
a. A refined target audience
b. Core objectives
c. Mission and vision
d. Clear content pillars - Clear next steps for the content and design phase
Another article will cover this phase — keep an eye out for it!
Our website needed a complete overhaul. We invested three months into understanding our website’s challenges and opportunities. Knowledge sharing is an important part of the work we do. Summarised below are the key activities, decisions and outcomes we know will contribute to a successful website redevelopment.
Top ten Discovery activities
1. Quantitive data collection:
Extensive Google Analytics research will provide quick, reliable statistics from a large sample size. We had to face some pretty scary truths when it came to our key stats:
2. Qualitative data collection:
Multiple-choice online surveys gave us the opportunity to understand user attitude towards the website — how users received the brand, content, and user experience.
3. User interviews:
We interviewed website users as they navigated the website. This shined a light on user experience challenges and gave us actionable insights.
4. Competitor review:
By reviewing a wide sample from the Charity sector, we were able to appreciate how a range of Charities convert visitors and learn from this.
5. Stakeholder interviews:
A lot of staff were heavily invested in the website. We knew that being mindful of this would be important for staff engagement and the success of the project. We carefully considered what was important for the organisation as well as our supporters.
6. Identifying key user journeys:
Using qualitative and quantitative research, we were able to identify the key routes users took through the website which would inform which areas we wanted to focus on most.
7. Information architecture review:
By reviewing the entire sitemap, we could see there were far too many branches on the tree. Categorising the content into sections helped us to make sense of the overwhelming amount of information.
8. Content review:
Conducting a full content audit of all webpages showed the extent of how much content was either out of date or no longer in line with the organisation’s strategic direction. We had 5,000 webpages and a lot of them needed to be archived or heavily edited.
We archived around 97% of our webpages and PDFs
9. Technical platform decision:
We chose to upgrade to Drupal 8 which was a major step forward from Drupal 7. This CMS would simplify content migration, provide flexibility and help us to future-proof the website. Very soon we will be making the upgrade to Drupal 9.
10. Internal communications plan:
Being mindful of the feedback we gathered during our stakeholder interviews, we created a solid multi-channel internal comms plan. We wanted staff to feel heard and listened to and become as invested in the redevelopment as we were.
The biggest challenge and opportunity
Our website had previously succumbed to the pressure of trying to meet the needs of all audiences and thereby failed to meet the needs of anyone. Many organisations struggle with this.
Without a thorough Discovery Phase, we wouldn’t have been in a position to tighten the site’s focus, which was integral to its success. Simply put, we now provide visitors with educational and inspirational content to encourage more people to become supporters of The Children’s Society.
Thank you to:
Nomensa — Website Discovery phase
