Identify and prioritize homepage objectives

[AmyKort]

To help users effectively navigate the website and easily find the content they're looking for, we're beginning work on version 2 of the homepage. Step one in this project is to identify and prioritize our homepage objectives.

[jenniferthibault]

Carrying over existing issues identified in https://github.com/18F/fec-cms/issues/1101

Home page issues

• Unclear about difference between "What's happening" and "Upcoming events" #4198

  “I find the difference between the "What's happening" and Upcoming events" sections to be unclear. Both contain future items– sometimes the same item– blurring the difference.”

• Request: more content above the fold on the home page #4095
• Can't find individual contributors data #4224 (most common issue)
• Make it easier to post a temporary update on the home page (with expiration, links)
• How are we using the featured/pinned items now? Can we improve guidance on what/how to use titles and links? This is confusing and not used well
  • 

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    Will follow up shortly with principles and goals assessment: right now I'm trying to figure out how to untangle all of these related issues

[jenniferthibault]

To get a clear picture of where we stand, I wanted to assess what v1 of the home page was doing well, what could be improved, and what it wasn't doing well. A retro informed by the goals we initially set for v1, and feedback reported from the public and the project team.

The full collection of that research is in this Google Doc 🔏 .

Summary:

What the home page is doing well (keep)

• States a clear purpose and value proposition
• Unbiased, informative perspective
• Help users learn about upcoming events and news/announcements at the agency
• Alerting users that they can provide feedback on the site

What the home page could do better (improve)

• Provide an entrypoint for commission meetings (could be home page, could be nav in general)
• Prioritize & clarify through reducing less effective content & clutter
• Highlight topics that are relevant to the news cycle that aren’t necessarily in the regular publication pattern (ex: foreign nationals)
• Find a better mechanism featured content that allows the FEC to show “featured” specific content, AND communicate a time-sensitive message simultaneously (like an ongoing meeting or filing deadline). Right now you can only do one or the other, since it’s the same module and position.

What’s not working on the home page

• Not able to use spaces designed to surface cyclical content for specific groups. This creates a lot of seemingly duplicated links and content, especially in the “Help for…” section.

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This seems like it could be a concrete, actionable list of improvements and goals we can work with for v2. I don't yet think we need to prioritize between them, but I would expect that different design options may offer us choices about what gets higher priority.

Next steps:

• @AmyKort & @johnnyporkchops, want to take a look at this and see if it makes sense to you? Glad to meet and talk things through
• Jen to start mocking up next iterations in #2159

[AmyKort]

Super-smart! Thanks for the research document.

[jenniferthibault]

Moved to design in #2159