A large-scale project for the world’s largest shipping association

What our client wanted

• To understand their wide-ranging member base better in order to provide them with a website that not only met but exceeded their expectations
• To consolidate and restructure their website information architecture so it is intuitive and to make it quicker and easier for members to find what they are looking for
• To involve all key stakeholders so they are bought into the project

What we delivered

• A series of internal stakeholder workshops to understand BIMCO’s goals and priorities
• An online survey to gather quantitative information about demographics, behaviour, regular habits and features that will be important
• Depth interviews with members from around the world to gather qualitative information about their needs and requirements to help develop desired content and functionality for the website
• Remote user testing (USA, China, Europe) of the current website to uncover what the key tasks are that users carry out when visiting the site
• User journey workshop to identify key behavioural patterns and themes and develop skeleton personas
• 6 key personas covering their diverse user base including the needs of their audience
• Mental models for the primary persona with key journeys for other personas
• Tree testing to understand how users categorise information
• A full Information Architecture helping to define the scope of wireframes required
• Participatory design workshop with stakeholders to generate ideas and concepts for the site
• High fidelity wireframe prototypes for over 100 pages covering the mobile and desktop versions of the website
• Iterative remote usability testing
• Visual design of the mobile and desktop versions of the website
• On-going support through the development process working closely with Sitecore developers

The work

Research

• Working closely with the team at BIMCO, we held a series of internal workshops with key staff from around the organisation to encourage engagement and to gather expert knowledge
• Using responses from 800 current site users, 16 remote usability tests from all over the world and analytics data, we gathered a clear picture of the current habits of website users.
• We carried out 16 depth interviews from a wide range of users around the world then carried this information into a user journey workshop which resulting 6 core BIMCO personas

Modelling

• Using the personas, we developed a set of mental models with a complete journey through the site for the primary persona. This helped to look at gaps on the current site and gave a roadmap for the architect phase

Architecture

• To get an understanding of how users categorise information, we carried out tree testing of current site content along with new content with over 300 users. This provided us with insight into how to structure content in an intuitive way
• We developed a full-scale information architecture containing over 500 unique content areas
• To gather internal knowledge and to kick the design process off, we ran a participatory design workshop which helped with creating some innovative features and new ways of presenting content
• This carried into a complete set of high fidelity wireframe prototypes for both mobile and desktop versions of the site. These were remote usability tested and iterated upon with stakeholder involvement

Design and development

• Working closely with BIMCO’s new branding guidelines, we created a full set of visual designs for both the mobile and desktop templates for the site
• Using our fully annotated wireframes, our consultants met weekly with the Sitecore developers (3 Chillies) to give a steer on requirements for all the important interactions within the site