Guiding users
In 2020, about 250 new pages and over 3,300 files were published to address general COVID-19 content but also information for hyper-specific audiences. Ths site grew quicker than anything CDC had previously experienced. Of course, the site’s IA got real whacky, real fast making it difficult to find specific guidance.
Leveraging taxonomy
One of, CDC Director, Dr. Rochele Walensky’s first ask for the COVID-19 website was a easily filterable collection of all of the COVID-19 guidance. A collection module was already available in the CDC WordPress instance but the sheer volume and complexity of COVID-19 guidance required something new.
I designed a landing page to help prompt users with topics before heading into a massive collection. I provided three ways for users to find the right information from most specific to least specific.
Search
I incorporated a search box into the banner image, a new design feature on CDC.gov. This would allow users to search for specific information if they knew exactly what they needed.
Ex: COVID-19 symptoms in pregnant peopleAudience links
COVID-19 content was the first content to be reliably tagged with audiences. This allowed me to create a section for users to look based on who they were. This option would return the most amount of content but it was tailored for that users’ possible needs.Topic buttons
Using design patterns from the COVID-19 site, I created a section which allowed users to navigate by topic. This would return all pages and files tagged with a specific term. Monitoring top pages and search terms, we were able to order the buttons in the most popular content at the moment.Ex: Clinical Care, Prevention & Infection Control, Disease Information
COVID-19 Guidance landing page.
Determining intention
Ultimately, we were able to glean intention from search terms. For instance, we saw an increase in specific locations. Ex: California, NYC, Jamaica, Bahamas, etc. Based on time of year and most viewed pages, we were able to determine people were interested in traveling again. Note the uptick in selected travel related words in early 2021. Based on this information, we were able to start promoting travel related links across the site. It also helped us prioritize travel content for UX assessment.
Travel - planes, Florida, Bahamas, Europe
Assumption - Users wanted to know if it’s safe to travel and any requirements they needed to follow.
Problem - Users weren’t being directed to the appropriate content because multiple pages mentioned travel and the dedicated travel content was difficult to browse.
Action - There were three main actions we took based on this information:
Crosslinking strategy
On pages that mentioned travel we designed and added cross links to direct users to additional information. Such as directing users when it’s safe to travel if they are showing symptoms of COVID-19.UX content review
The search data helped us get approval to do a UX review of the travel content. Initially we offered quick fixes to make the pages more scannable. We recommended adding headers with keywords from the search terms. To catch users searching for specific locations, we used words like “travel,” “domestic,” “international,” “vacation.” We also made sure crosslinks went to clearly related travel content.
Prioritizing travel content
We started including travel content in high priority areas such as the COVID-19 and CDC.gov homepages.
See also: Button it up!
Google search trend data for 3 travel related terms. Traffic spike in early 2020 was mostly related to shutdowns.
Following the vaccine
The timeline of the COVID-19 vaccine was reflected in our search data.
Before the vaccine
Initially, we had no vaccine content but I saw users searching for vaccine information. We grouped vaccine searches into the Prevention group. To account for the vaccine content gap, I developed call out boxes to highlight the lack of a vaccine. We were liberal with the placement across pages as vaccine information was an Agency priority.
After the vaccine
Once a vaccine was released, the surge in traffic and importance meant we began targeted metrics analysis on vaccine content. This included grouped search terms specific to vaccine topics.
Fun facts
“Zombie” would sporadically pop up as a term in our search data.
Bonus fact, the first season of The Walking Dead did not film at the actual CDC facility.
A weekly view of grouped vaccine search terms.