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OUTCOMES
Increased organic traffic by 70% Increased subscriptions by 100%
OBSTACLES
BUMPS IN THE ROAD
1
LOSING RESOURCES
Unexpected layoffs within our organization, led to a sudden shortage of manpower and expertise. This placed additional pressure on the remaining team members and required us to adapt quickly to take on new roles and responsibilities.
How I adapted:
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Leverage our design system to use existing components to reduce development cost and time
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Scaled back our designs to ensure component and layout were flexible and reusable throughout the blogs site
2
SKILL LIMITATIONS
Working with authors who had limited knowledge of image resizing and design constraints posed another challenge. This restriction hindered our creative freedom and compelled us to find innovative solutions within the given limitations.
How I adapted:
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Designed image containers that had 3:2 ratios so images that author are using crop nicely.
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Designed components that flow well together which allows authors most flexibility to drag drop component to make interesting layouts and content.
3
NEW WAY OF WORKING
During our project our company decided to switch to agile method. This cause our whole team to be restructured and team members being moved to new teams. However we had to continue finishing the project while on separate teams.
How I adapted:
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Attend agile training workshops
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Read books and articles to understand the agile method
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Maintain a consistent line a communication between project manager and team members
THE CHALLENGE
CREATE A FUN AND ENGAGING EXPERIENCE
Blogs play a pivotal role in today's digital landscape, by consistently producing valuable and informative content, companies can position themselves as industry leaders and experts, fostering trust and loyalty among their customers.
Blogs also contribute to search engine optimization (SEO), helping companies improve their online visibility and attract organic traffic.
Our challenge was to create an informative, fun, and engaging experience that empowered authors to write informative content for our readers, customers, and prospects.
GOALS
1
Design a layout that was flexible, engaging, interactive and reflects our brand personality
2
Increase Organic traffic and subscriptions
3
Improve overall user experience
DISCOVERY
WHAT ARE OUR COMPETITORS DOING?
Web UX analyzed several competitor blogs experiences and identified opportunities that we could potentially incorporate into the redesigned Splunk blogs experience
Opportunities:
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Create a dynamic, interactive, engaging, and fun editorial experience that speaks to our brand personality
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Use a mixture of ways to break up the body content to make it more dynamic and easier to digest, preventing them from being a wall of text.
View full discovery report
DISCOVERY
WHAT EXACTLY IS WRONG?
Conducted a heuristics on Splunk blogs focusing on:
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Navigation throughout the blogs experience Information architecture
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Blogs categorization and tagging
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Overall page design, look and feel
Findings:
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Category title is small and hard to read
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No preview description about blog post
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Inconsistent Author image sizes
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Some blog titles do not display
I also interviewed our authors to understand their wants and needs
Insights from interview:
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Authors want to be able to display more than one author on blog post
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Authors want flexibility in layout
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Author want to be able to have recommended articles at the end of every post
TO KEEP IN MIND
WHO ARE WE DESIGNING FOR?
THE AUTHOR
Taylor Teether
Age:
Occupation
Background
32
Content Marketing Specialist
Taylor is a skilled content marketer with a deep understanding of the tech industry. With a background in digital marketing and a passion for technology, Taylor excels at creating engaging blog content that resonates with the company's target audience.
Goals
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Showcase the company's expertise and innovative solutions through informative and insightful blog posts on relevant topics in the tech industry.
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Increase brand awareness and drive website traffic by producing high-quality blog content that attracts and engages the company's target audience.
Frustrations
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Finding creative ways to differentiate the company's blog from competitors and capture the attention of busy tech professionals.
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Measuring the effectiveness of blog content in terms of engagement, traffic, and lead generation, and optimizing strategies accordingly.
THE READER
Ryan Poles
Age:
Occupation
Background
28
Software Developer
Ryan is a software developer who holds a degree in computer science and works for a tech startup, where he's involved in developing cutting-edge software solutions. Ryan is eager to learn and stay updated on the latest trends, tools, and best practices in the tech industry to enhance his skills and knowledge
Goals
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Stay informed about the latest developments, updates, and trends in the tech industry to remain competitive in his field.
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Find practical solutions, tips, and insights to overcome challenges and improve his coding skills and software development practices.
Frustrations
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Finding credible and reliable sources of information amidst the abundance of content available online.
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Keeping up with the rapid pace of technological advancements and innovations, which can sometimes feel overwhelming.
IDEATION
After interviewing authors, looking at competitors and understanding what needs improvement it was time to start ideating
TESTING
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Users found it easy to navigate through the blogs on desktop
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Users like the use of bold titles to help breakup text in blog post
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Users found jump links within a blog post useful. It allowed them to navigate quickly to the section they care about the most
I built a prototype using Figma and tested the new designs through user testing. I had a total of 20 participants, 10 for mobile and 10 desktop.
LOOKS GOOD, BUT WHAT DO USERS THINK?
The amount of information displayed mobile
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The navigation on mobile needs to be easier for users to get go back to previous page.
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There is confusion on where they click to return to blogs homepage
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What worked well
What needs refinement
DELIVERABLE
MORE WAYS TO HIGHLIGHT IMPORTANT BLOG POST
One of our goals was to design a layout that was flexible, engaging, interactive and reflects our brand personality.
So we created multiple ways for our authors to highlight blogs that deserve the spotlight.
Authors have the option to highlight a blog post all by itself. This can be used to display content about important and exciting information about the business
Another options authors have is to highlight a article within a certain category while also displaying article around it. This options create hierarchy and lets readers know what they should pay attention to.
DELIVERABLE
DELIVERING MORE INFORMATION TO READERS
I wanted to deliver as much preview information about a blog post to our readers before they decided to click on it
So what’s new?
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Included the time it takes to read
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Included a tag that indicated the category the blog fell in. The tag is also clickable and will take readers to more blog post in that category
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Included a description
DELIVERABLE
MORE BLOG POST WITHOUT INCREASING PAGE LENGTH
Our authors write great content that we want readers to read! Scrolling sucks, so I leveraged our design system and used the carousel, to allows for more articles to be displayed.
DELIVERABLE
Sometimes author collaborate and we want to make sure they both are receiving the credit they deserve.
Before there was no way to include more than one article on a post, now authors can do it in two place! You can find their name(s) at the beginning of the blog post and also a headshot and bio at the bottom of the post.
I leverage the existing component used to display authors, because if it anit broke, don’t fix it! Doing this helped reduce cost and time of development and save on time.
DELIVERABLE
LOVE A PATICULAR AUTHOR?
You ever read a book or article and wanted to read more from this author? We revamped our author page to make it easier for readers to find more content by their favorite authors.
Readers can find more content from our authors by simply clicking their name on the blog post.
I reused the author bio component found on the bottom of blog post and incorporated at the top of the author page. Work smarter not harder. Doing this cut down on development time, cost, and ensured we are designing reusable components.
DELIVERABLE
INTERESTED IN A PATICULAR TOPIC?
Have a topic you’re passionate about? We have dedicated category pages where you can all article written about that topic.
Our category pages follows a similar layout you’ll see on our homepage. This ensures we maintain consistency.
DELIVERABLE
CONNECTING WITH OUR READERS
We incorporated a subscription button along with social links for our readers to continue to connect with us. This can be found at the bottom of every page on our blogs.
Doing this has increased subscriptions by a 100% compared to Feb 2023 to after launch in Feb 2024
