When Deakin University decided to transform their website, they asked Briarbird (through DWS) to investigate and revise their information structure and architecture (IA). While a university website needs to serve many users, Deakin was keen to refocus the site around its marketing objectives. This business focus was key to helping us navigate a large and complex site.
Many authors, lots of content
Deakin University website has over 15,000 pages and almost 1 million hits per month. It also has distributed authoring and management of content. The result was a rambling website that is a less than ideal marketing tool for the university.
Briarbird’s task was to transform the IA in order to make the website an effective marketing channel. The challenge for us was to not be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content and to identify those elements that were critical to success.
Extensive business consultation
Our process involved broad business consultation across the university, which resulted in the development of goals, objectives and detailed supporting business requirements. The development of the IA also involved content auditing, customer research, benchmarking, development of taxonomies, consideration of SEO impacts and iterative development of the navigation support systems.
Briarbird delivered the IA model, wireframes and specification for the transformation of the website, and this model was used to guide the migration and implementation process.