Redesign the digital ecosystem of The IIA to enhance the user experience for internal auditors.
Digital Transformation Case Study
Overview
Position The IIA for future growth and innovation.
The website is the primary entry point and an essential tool for internal auditors looking to stay up-to-date and informed in their field and engage with the profession. The IIA's website is a comprehensive resource for internal auditors, offering a wide range of tools, resources, information on internal audit standards and guidance, professional development, videos, and publications.
Problems and Potential Solutions
Problem:
Multiple independent sites with duplicate content lead to a confusing online experience, with inconsistent navigation, appearance, and content locations. There is minimal customization for the individual user.
Solutions:
Use personalization to provide a unified view of the user's relationship to the IIA, including reminders and recommendations.
Provide seamless access with a single set of sign-on credentials.
Serve global content via a centralized repository behind the scenes.
Problem:
Failure to meet one of the most desired consumer features, organization and search capability by topics.
Solution:
Shift from taxonomy based on internal departments to one based on user information needs and topics.
Solutions:
Communicate and illustrate a clear member value proposition across the site.
Sharpen and clarify the boundary between free and member-only content consistently across the site.
Problem:
Membership presence is contained within membership pages. In addition, there is confusion over what content and features are member-only and which are available to everyone.
objectives & challenges
objectives
The primary objective was to modernize and streamline the IIA, focusing on the profession and needs of our members.
Deliver user expectations to easily locate topical content and an intuitive and personalized website experience.
Capitalize on revenue potential by creating relevant experiences for each user.
The IIA must personalize the new design to the user, be topically relevant, and be easy to navigate.
It must be an integrated and customer-driven experience.
challenges
The IIA serves constituents through a network of independent but related websites.
Numerous subsites provide additional content based on industry, delivery format, or geography.
The IIA's online presence is a confusing patchwork of sites with diverse but not mutually-exclusive offerings.
Audience & Market Research
Users & Audience
Internal Audit professionals around the world and our IIA Affiliates globally.
Market research
Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global Internal Audit market, estimated at US$35.5 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$49.3 Billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 4.8% over the period 2020-2027.
personas
We created personas that would be typical IIA users. Personas will be useful to improve the user experience. The aim is to create the best itinerary and improve the functionalities to provide the best possible experience for the persona.
The Design Process
Discover - Understand
In the first stage, we reached out to users to find out their concerns, collected data, and identified all possible scenarios. We then illustrated the various parameters users found most useful. It helped us develop the solution we wanted to achieve through several variations.
This also helped us understand users' needs, anxieties, frustrations, fears, capabilities, limitations, reasoning, and objectives. It also allowed us to develop more effective solutions later in the design process.
User Research
Our User research focused on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through interviews, surveys, usability evaluations and other forms of feedback methodologies.
Overall key findings from user research surveys
Local offerings play a critical role in the member website experience.
Local events
Leader messages and congratulations
Local advertising
Career Center jobs
Document repository
Contact details
Brand is key to consistency in our consumers view The IIA
Overall finding: over 70% of affiliates use core IIA branding, with some adaptation.
Modified brand but leveraged the bug even when it does not translate.
New design to accommodate their language, name, and/or acronym.
Define - Empathize
Since design thinking emphasizes the importance of human-centered design, the first step in design thinking is empathy. This allowed us to gain a glimpse into users' feelings, thoughts, and goals.
User Interviews
We conducted interviews with stakeholders to gain knowledge of the goals of the business and features to be added to the new website design.
We conducted individual web-based research sessions with 35 current and prospective users of The IIA's websites
current members (North America)
international members-at-large
lapsed members
prospective members
We also collected additional insight from international institute leaders about their members' behaviors and needs.
Each session included an interview and task completion exercises on the site.
Design - What is next
This phase focused on using a unique approach to developing our ideas. Based on the information we distilled from the previous steps, and the statement of problem that we started with earlier we were able to explore the possibilities. We developed a variety of deliverables to assist us in identifying and visualizing solutions.
card sorting
We used card sorting to evaluate the information architecture of the website. We organized topics into categories that make sense to them and labeled these groups. The insight allowed us to understand how users would expect to see content grouped on a website and how they might see these groups labeled.
Card sorting didn’t show us the final information architecture or menu of the site, but it helped identify how many potential categories there could be.
Sketches
After we gathered all my information from the exploratory phase, we set out to create the site. In order to begin this process, we began sketching several the principal screens using the user flow as a reference. This helped us quickly look at various ideas regarding the layout of the site.
Journey mapping
After conducting the card sorting, we created a user journey map to tackle the problem while considering the behavior we found.
wireframing
We created wireframes to show the content & Elements layout. While these aren’t final mockups, it helped us understand the best places to place every element, including images, buttons, text and so on. It makes the design process easier and saves time.
user flow
We then created an extensive flow of the user. This basically illustrates the many routes that a user could follow to finish the tasks. The process of creating this flow helped us to consider the user's point of view and think about the various options that a user can take when using the website. This helped us define the objectives of the website and prioritize the features that are essential during the prototyping phase.
prototypes
Using InVision, we started converting wireframes into a visual form that is easy to understand and looks like the exact website that will be developed.
impact
Improved year-over-year user engagement on the website.
Since the launch of the website redesign, TheIIA.org has continued to show growth in user engagement year-over-year. As with any project, there was a period of adjustment and enhancements after launch. However, the website has continued growth in Users, Sessions, and Pageviews. Even better, online registrations have also increased since its launch.
making meaningful content
+64%
Pageviews
By focusing on the quality of our content and optimizing the layouts of our resource pages, we saw an increase of +64% in page views.
-13%
bounce rate
Analytics showed that the Become a Member page was one of the most visited, yet it had one of the highest bounce rates. By simplifying the onboarding process, we lowered the average bounce rate.
+19%
New Users
Streamlining and improving the digital ecosystem user experience, we increased our new users.
+22%
page/session
By focusing on the legibility of Magazine articles and improving our taxonomy, we saw an increase in pages/sessions.