TEDxNaperville Website Redesign (2018-2021)

Overview

The TEDxNaperville website is the main hub to learn about the organization and a primary route through which people buy tickets to events. The 2018 had been in use for 6 years and built on a WordPress template developed around 2012. As the organization grew and evolved, it became clear that the organization would need an updated web presence that better fit the growing organization’s needs and to adapt to the changing Internet world.

The Problem Space

TEDxNaperville is a volunteer-run organization. It simply can’t support hundreds of customer support issues or constant web platform updates. Furthermore, such an organization naturally has a high turnover rate, even in top-level organizers. This leads to difficulty in training and education to ensure platforms and designs are consistent and stable year over year.

As the organization evolved and grew, we found it more and more difficult to manage our own web presence. Specifically, our website:

• Had greatly increased in complexity and page sprawl.

• Had too few people who could technically manage the site or spend time updating the content.

• Took too much time to update and manage content across so many pages.

• Wasn’t mobile optimized and wasn’t https secured.

• Wasn’t addressing increasing attendee support issues.

With Google’s search algorithm starting to downgrade search rankings for non-https sites, we found this an excellent time to do a full site redesign, and along with it, move away from a self-hosted platform and WordPress content management system (CMS).

Based on our identified business goals and organizational issues, we’d have the following goals for a redesign:

1. Reduce quantity of updates, maintenance, and support tickets

2. Use data to optimize flows and page structure

3. Maintain or increase visual impact

4. Optimize the experience for mobile

Research & Planning

We knew we wanted to be more data-driven in how we laid out the site, so I went right to our Google Analytics. I started by mapping user journeys as told by our analytics, understanding what the top routes were and what pages most wanted to see. Through this, I discovered 3 major user goals:

• How do I attend a conference?

• How do I apply to speak or gent involved at a conference?

• Where can I watch all current or past TEDxNaperville talks?

Analytics research also provided tons of insight on what terms people were using when searching for the event, what pages were most useful to them, and what information they were most interested in. Once I had what I thought were my content priorities, I went to our parent organization, TED.com, to reference how they structured their site. I found a lot of similarities between their main navigation and our Google Analytics, which helped validate my information architecture.

Researching Support Tickets & FAQs

Following this, I reviewed more than 100 support tickets and questions we received over the previous conference seasons to build a comprehensive, categorized set of FAQs that we would address in the upcoming site. This would serve as the bulwark to reduce customer support issues and provide a single page we could constantly link to to resolve more than 90% of attendee questions.

Researching Other TEDx Event Websites

I also researched dozens of other TEDx events from around the world to see how they structured their sites. During this work, I discovered a significant philosophical difference I would take with the website vs other events. Nearly all other TEDx organizations’ websites were structured around their event, just like our 2012 site version was. That meant that content updates always spanned many pages and every new event required a near total rework of the website. The amount of work to do that was crazy.

TEDxNaperville decided to take a different approach. The website would be the hub to engage with the brand of TEDxNaperville. The event would be qualified as a product of the organization. This means that the website shouldn’t be structured around the event because the event isn’t the brand, just a piece of it. This simple philosophical change would allow us to consolidate all content on our event “product” to a single page, reducing workload.

Selecting a Content Management Platform

The complexity of updating the CMS and template often created errors in new version uploads. Analytics through Google were robust but complex and tough for a layperson to take action on. There was no included security. Hosting in general was complex and error-prone. Due to these factors, we knew we had to find a single, cohesive platform that provided content management, automatic version updating, was mobile responsive, and included analytics.

We experimented with both Wix and Squarespace to prototype pages, but eventually selected Squarespace due to its more streamlined interface, ease of use, and because it fulfilled all of our management needs in one location, from security certificates to analytics.

The Redesign

For websites, I usually begin with a paper or Adobe XD wireframe for the major pages, removing, combining, or restructuring content areas into ones more aligned to the user flows and data I’d discovered during research. This usually means the homepage is the first page designed and sets the main navigation and page flow. I had to be intentional about what content was allowed at the top and what was considered secondary information. Anything people weren’t searching for either needed to be consolidated in a different page, downgraded in priority, or removed. Here’s what the new navigation would look like:

This meant removing and consolidating content on things like testimonials, speaker pages, old event archives, input forms, and verbose content in general. In doing so, I’d create a minimal site with a data-driven navigation while keeping content updates to just a few pages. As each event came around, content could be swapped out on the “Attend” page and the rest of the pages could effectively stay as-is.

Any requirements, text-heavy descriptions, and supporting information would be relegated to a single, categorized FAQs page. This allowed me to keep higher-priority pages exceptionally short while still directing users to more information as needed and not overburdening them. This FAQs page is a significant feature of the site structure and sacrifices some user experience to ensure tighter user actions in context and fewer locations to update content.

The Homepage

First, the homepage had to visually pull you in, so I used a stunning, curiosity-inducing image that filled the full device screen. This would help direct user focus to either the main navigation or a short description of the organization paired with a single CTA to access the conference info.

Thanks to the search data, I made the nav as simple and short as possible, highlighting only the most important user needs and providing a navigation button area for any critical actions, like buying a ticket right now. Navigation items were named for their actions rather than nouns, for example “watch” instead of “talks” or “participate” instead of “volunteers.”

Below the fold is a secondary, but more visual navigation to help direct users to their most desired site areas: seeing the event, applying to speak, and watching talks. Note that this page technically never has to change. One could simply update a new background image and the site would look totally refreshed.

Content Design & Writing

General

The site is built to be aggressively minimal in its content, relying heavily on analytics to determine what words to use and how to direct users around. For example, the main navigation features action-based words for what actions users were searching for rather than nouns stating objects. These verbs also help direct a user by intention rather than bland statements.

Each page’s text is designed to be short, succinct, very focused in action, and human in voice. I wanted to ensure people could understand what such a unique organization actually was, what they’d get from it, and what they could do with it. For example, instead of using lofty terms and marketing jargon to describe the event, I try to describe the organization in layman’s terms with inspiring language:

No other conference has this kind of simple, down-to-earth explanation of what their TEDx event or brand actually is. Language with this kind of voice helps the organization walk the walk in its goals to share ideas that all can understand.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Considerations

While the site’s platform provides SEO content areas, the actual page content was also specifically written to hit on the organization’s most important branded, non-branded, and location-based keywords. Each page’s content is minimal and focuses on bulleted content or consumable chunks of information to create the best user experience. SEO terms are embedded into each of these descriptions or headers on every page to ensure the organization is competitive with other local organizations.

Outcomes

The outcomes were actually stunning. Following the release, we experienced a significant drop in user support tickets and a much more streamlined submission system specifically for speakers. The site was much easier to manage due to content changes being confined to only a few pages (e.g. Attend and FAQs), and in 2021, I was able to easily offboard website management to a 3rd party to maintain for upcoming conferences.

Further, through our streamlined hosting platform, we now have analytics, SEO, and other settings in one places for any administrator to see and use. Squarespace makes the site mobile responsive and includes a security certificate to ensure we have better usability and higher search rankings.

Outcomes are as followed:

1. Content updates across the entire site are confined to roughly 2 pages, reducing overall workload and updates.

2. Reduction in page sprawl and complexity, leading to better user focus and easier long-term site maintenance.

3. Combining actions and consolidating content into single pages (e.g. A single speaker/volunteer/partner page) means one-stop-shops for meeting user goals.

4. Significant reduction in support tickets through use of categorized FAQs page.

5. Easier to use and to train others to maintain.

6. Mobile responsive.

7. Increased site security.

Since 2012, content and design elements from the TEDxNaperville website have made such an impact on the global TEDx community, dozens of other TEDx events (as of 2018) have use entire content segments or have even replicated entire portions of the website to use in their own (with our permission). These included (at the time):

• TEDxTucson

• TEDxGlasgow

• TEDxWroclaw

• TEDxCharlottesville

• TEDxIHEParis

Note: Tiled main page iMac computer designed by Graphictwister / Freepik.