the project

The International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) aims to be the comprehensive source of information about freedom of expression issues worldwide. Acting as a clearinghouse for information from its dozen of locally-based and international member organizations, the organization's Web site and mailing lists often publish over a dozen updates a day in three different languages -- French, Spanish and English.

the objectives

The project had four primary objectives:

• Reduce the time and cost of adding new content to the IFEX site
  

• Increase usage of the IFEX Web site by 100% within the next year, as measured by page views
  

• Increase usage of IFEX mailing lists by 50% per year over the next 3 years, as measured by total subscribers
  

• Reduce the cost of measuring site traffic to the point where actual tracking is itself a realistic goal

the challenges

Prior to the re-launch, the client's Web and email publishing tools were a mish-mash of different, often barely-compatible, technologies phased in over the preceding 7-plus years. The mix was frequently unstable, made comprehensive site analytics inaccurate and time consuming to perform and complicated the organization's training picture. Consolidating these platforms to one stable system required migrating nearly 25,000 legacy records from 3 different database management systems.

From a design perspective, the client's international user base presented challenges to standard user-centered design techniques. With many of the site's users located thousands of kilometers away from the client's headquarters and a limited budget for travel or technology-driven approaches, opportunities for direct observation and interaction with many user segments were severely limited.

The client also had several unique organizational workflows that needed to be reflected in the finished solution as well as severely limited capacity to absorb any unbudgeted costs.

the Fruition

Strategy

After project vision was crystallized, Fruition worked with the client to define a series of release cycles that would provide maximum benefit early in the project lifecycle with lower-priority functionalities being layered on as the project progressed -- lower-priority development continues to the present day.

Each release cycle progressed through requirements analysis, design, development, testing and deployment and training phases.

Design

During initial release's requirements definition phase, Fruition worked with the client to define several key user segments and developed a needs profile for each segment. These needs profiles provided the basis for site navigation, taxonomy and graphic design.

In designing the site's back-office functionalities, Fruition used standard user-centered design techniques including listening labs, use cases, wireframes and paper prototyping.

In designing the public-facing site functionalities and to address the challenge of the globally-dispersed audience, Fruition relied heavily on heuristic analysis as well as paper-prototyping using client staff as a proxy for other users.

Development

To address the technical challenge of migrating a large amount of legacy data from disparate systems, Fruition partnered with modelclarity software systems . Modelclarity's Data Analyst tool provided crucial insight into the structures and content of the source databases and the company's professional services provided needed support in mapping those structures and content to the target system.

Additional technical support was provided by eZ systems AS of Skien, Norway.

Measurement

After analyzing the client's requirements for site analytics, Fruition evaluated several software systems for log analysis, eventually settling on a free open source product. The new solution allows the client to view and interpret site traffic patterns including page views, top entry and exit pages, top referrers, top search terms and top client software. Reports are updated daily.

the results

• Data migration, design and development completed on time for projected launch date.
  

• Time required to add content to the site reduced by an estimated 10 percent, with additional improvements pending
  

• A 700 percent increase in page views within a year of launch.
  

• Client can demonstrate ROI to funders and measure effectiveness of new initiatives quickly and easily in nearly real-time.
  

• Mailing list usage data is expected to be available in the near future.