NAVIGATION REDESIGN

Services

Content Strategy, Customer Research, Content Design, Microcopy, Accessibility, Localization

Background

The bank over the years had failed to transition to a modern navigation design compared to its other major rivals. We wanted to improve the usefulness, robustness and the scalability of our navigation across all our public sites. There was clear data that showed us how our traffic on the homepage especially navigation had dropped over a 18-month period.

Strategy

We redesigned the navigation structure after:

• Business partner interviews

• Competitive ideation analysis

• Navigation structure analysis

• Design brainstorming

• Competitive heuristic analysis

• Exploratory usability testing

• Card sorting

• Content stress testing

• Concept prototype testing

My role

I researched the different navigation structures available across Canadian, American, British, and Australian banks along with a few in Europe.
Then I analyzed the top navigation of identified companies to understand the structure used to organize navigation items and groupings. This was the hierarchy:

Level 1: Segment Home (e.g. Accounts)

Level 2: Category Home (e.g. Chequing Accounts)

Level 3: Category Details (e.g. Everyday Chequing Account)
After this, I helped define the main structure of the navigation menus on excel sheets and helped the UX Designer narrow down the designs of our 2 main options. I also got my hands dirty with wireframes. I mocked a couple up to help out my UXD. The UXD turned their nose up at it but I enjoyed going down into the trenches with my sleeves rolled up.
Finally, I wrote the copy for the entire nav structures. It didn’t end there.
I helped other line of businesses craft content basis what he had achieved for our day#1 release.

Before redesign

The one that didn’t make it

I worked on 2 designs with the team, adding actual copy to both so that our business stakeholders could visualize what it would look like. Our research study with about 20 participants helped us narrow down the primary design choice as customers seemed to ‘analyze’ this descriptive style a lot more. I came up with all the research questions around copy.

P.S. I liked this one more as it was far more descriptive. Sadly, it was also considered more information dense.

After redesign

collab ftw, future ready!

• We were all ears when it came to business frustration with the existing nav structure. Now our partners are dancing the days away!

• All our partners got their hands dirty joining us as key allies and bringing their knowledge and expertise over to our neck of the woods.

• The new design is future ready:

  Sales: Integrate sales capabilities like Shopping Cart and Chat into the navigation components.

  Personalization: Integrate personalized content based on audience segments to serve tailored content, increasing potential product uptake and conversion.