Timberline Lodge wanted to upgrade their site to present Timberline as approachable and friendly. The goal with the information architecture was to provide content in a natural, logical organization, so visitors could quickly and easily find what they were looking for, and discover related content. We had the benefit of a previous year’s customer survey and existing site analytics that provided some quantitative data around what people wanted and what they were doing, but I also wanted to get some stories from people, in their own narrative, about what they wanted from the web site when planning a trip up to Timberline Lodge.
Personas and scenarios
From interviews, I identified proto-personas, brief descriptions of user classes and their motivations, and the information those users were seeking. An interesting behavior that emerged from the interviews was that people didn’t always have a single purpose. A high number of survey responses told us that people were using the web site to plan their vacations, and when they planned a vacation, they needed multiple pieces of information. Hotel rates & reservations, ski rental, accommodations, lift hours. We wanted the navigation to help these multi-taskers with everything they needed to do.
Speaking to the user needs in the navigation
From there, we planned contextual menus to speak to the primary goals of the users, and to display secondary navigation info that might also be relevant in the viewing context. The primary menu divides the site into three primary functions: Visit, Play, and Learn. When viewing one of the primary categories, the menu in the sidebar contains a secondary sidebar menu related to the section. A tertiary menu, configurable on a per page basis, provides links other potential areas of interest.
Content impact
I used the proto-personas and goals to build out a content plan for the copywriter to make the copy more friendly, hard-working, and user focused. The tone needed to match the spirit of the update: approachable, easy, answering the questions people were asking.
Props
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