Verizon Wireless Showcase

Web Development, UX/UI Design, Graphic Design

Case Study

Overview and Objectives

March 9, 2014

In February of 2014 we launched a newly designed home page I developed for Verizon Business.

Primary Objectives:

  • Migrate the home page in to a CMS so that it can be managed on a much more agile and flexible basis in order to better help meet the needs of the business.
  • Develop a strategy to make maintenance of the home page easy for those without web development background via the Adobe CQ5 CMS.
  • Improve the overall User Experience by identifying pain points in the current design and finding solutions to minimize friction and anxiety.
  • Improve the infrastructure of the page by reducing code bloat with focus on phased approach to get closer to W3C compliance while improving page performance, SEO etc.
  • Strengthen the Verizon Brand by bringing the B2B side of the business in to alignment with the branding found on the B2C side.
  • Provide fallback experience to customers who visit the site with JavaScript disabled.

Review

The New Design

The redesign of the Verizon Business home page boasts several improvements. The biggest of which is a page that still works when JavaScript is turned off.

This fallback allows the Verizon Business home page to still be functional even to those who disable JavaScript. Not only does it allow content to still be accessible to visitors, it is also accessible to Search Engines.

The new marquee area introduces a prominent log in. Prior to the redesign, customers needed to make several clicks to find it. I reworked the pagination alongside fellow team members to improve the usability. I introduced a marquee preview thumbnail that displays when the visitor hovers over the pagination to inform visitors what they can find on each slide.

In the past, marquees were flat images. The text, products, buttons, etc. were all inaccessible to Screen Readers and Search Engines. Now, the text is coded in HTML and accessible to both Search Engines and Screen Readers. The marquees have been templatized to provide a consistent location for product placement and messaging. We also introduced lifestyle imagery to visually convey how Verizon's products and services help to enhance a customer's life.

The links displayed above were added underneath the marquee to provide a highly-visual aid to visitors in order to bring prominence to highly-trafficked destinations of Verizon's site.

Further down the page are a couple of sliders that allow for promotional content, ranging from deals on products and services to touting the Verizon network and why it is the leader in the industry.

Lastly, I worked with the stakeholder to revamp the site footer. Before it was out of alignment with the B2C footer and also lacking efficiency in helping the visitor find what they were looking for. Also, the previous footer was not very SEO friendly. From a front-end development perspective there was a lot to improve within the footer.

Improvements to the footer included:

  • Improving the document structure so that the headers were no longer using H1's.
  • Improving the text for headers to not only be more descriptive of what is found in each column, but having more keyword density and SEO relevance.
  • Reducing code bloat using only what is necessary.
  • Improving the Information Architecture to help visitors filter what they are looking for with links that take them to the content they want instead of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at them.
  • Using more descriptive copy for links that are also keyword dense and have higher SEO relevance.

Through this redesign we were able to significantly reduce bloated code and improve the User Experience while bringing the Verizon Business home page into alignment with the Verizon brand.