Audience-first, Modern Website Design

AASHTO’s Center for Environmental Excellence promotes environmental stewardship and encourages innovative ways to streamline the transportation delivery process, but their website was outdated and not representative of what they are doing as an organization.


Strategy and Information Architecture

To quickly grasp the size and shape of the website we would be redesigning, and how audiences were using it, our team conducted a content inventory and analytics analysis of the current site. A virtual workshop with all the client stakeholders confirmed the business objective, audiences, goals and support content. We developed a site map, user flows, recommended content strategy and content inventory for migration informed by the workshop learnings.

Website Build and Content Migration

The new site is content-rich, with multiple custom content types and custom taxonomies used to show related content across pages. Key technical features of the site include:

  • Automated syndication of news content from a third-party publisher
  • Three filterable, searchable custom databases, each of which support inputs from end user
  • Integration of AddSearch for enterprise-level faceted and filtered search throughout the site

To support the unique layouts developed for all the content items we designed, our team manually migrated more than 300 pages of existing content into the new IA site.

Ongoing Maintenance

The launch of a website is just the beginning of a new chapter in any organization’s communications strategy, and we continue to support AASHTO’s CEE with ongoing content strategy and technical maintenance driven by proactive analytics reviews and site audits.

Results

  • Share of traffic from organic search increased from 40% to 68% following redesign, tied to improved SEO strategies in the site build and more easily surfaced information
  • Traffic is now more distributed across all 50 states, previously was concentrated in 10 states
  • 7% increase in mobile website viewing, bringing total to 16% of traffic being on mobile devices
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