From fishing to food safety: an IA that works for everybody
Creating a new information architecture to help MPI customers find what they need easily.
Help! My information architecture needs to support thousands of tasks.
Have you ever wanted to know when you can bring your beloved pet into Aotearoa? Whether that yoghurt you just bought is the one that’s been recalled? Or if that pesky looking insect in your garden is a biosecurity hazard? These are just a few of the thousands of questions the Ministry for Primary Industries’ (MPI) website needs to answer, both for people like you and for multinational businesses.
MPI’s customers are a hugely diverse bunch, with information needs covering fisheries, food safety and forestry, as well as biosecurity and agriculture and investment services.
MPI wanted to create a new IA to help people navigate the website and find the content they need. I love large IA challenges, so this project was right up my street!
Making it easy for people to find what they need
The first few month’s website data is good news for people getting the information they need:
A 37% decrease in time spent on the homepage and landing pages shows customers are finding where they need to go, faster.
A 21% decrease in on-page searches shows that people can find the content they need more easily.
A 53% reduction in callers to MPI saying they couldn’t find what they need on the website shows people can more easily get the information they need.
Understanding the needs of many business units
MPI is a ‘mega ministry’, which means there are a lot of business needs to consider. We met with over 100 stakeholders to understand their needs for the website, and hear their take on what their customers want.
Building on the mahi done before
The MPI team set us up for success by laying the groundwork with stakeholders, sharing their knowledge and the work done by other vendors before us. With their care for the people who use their site, and impressive knowledge, we formed a strong team focused on improving user journeys.
Maximising insights within the time we had
We needed to cover as many user needs as possible, with the time we had for customer interviews. Working with Lanalytics we used Google Analytics, alongside existing customer research and input from stakeholders, to define priority user needs. These informed our customer matrix, defining how we covered the maximum user needs within the number of participants we had. Focusing on new and inexpert users meant we could support the people who needed the most help with the website.
Creating, testing and learning: it works
We built on insights from customer research to create a new IA, which we tested using remote and in-person methods. Research revealed some interesting things for us to consider: should we separate business and personal content? How should people search for products or tasks? Do 80% of site visitors on a weekend just care about fishing?
We took these considerations, refined the IA and tested it again in wireframes, to make sure the design and IA worked together.
An IA is nothing if it can’t be implemented
An IA on its own looks concrete, but can be surprisingly nebulous when you hand it over to a business or agency to implement. We gave MPI an IA strategy: a plan for how to achieve an effective, sustainable, people-focused IA. This supported the IA implementation, providing recommendations for design, development and content to make sure the IA was an ongoing success.
IA change drives business change
A new IA can change the story a business tells about itself, and the IA we proposed was very different to what key stakeholders initially envisaged. We knew stakeholder engagement would be important from the start. We made sure we met people early in the project, were always approachable and available to answer questions, and took them through our mahi often - every fortnight in fact! This meant stakeholders were comfortable with the changes, and saw the opportunities they brought MPI. Together, they got behind the project and implemented the IA and content changes needed to improve customer experience.
Team members (Springload)
Sharon Talbot, Michelle Kennedy
More information
My role
Experience Director
Client
Ministry for Primary Industries
Agency
Springload