HRCalifornia.com
Making Content Count — A Study in Information Architecture
Background
In 2005, California Chamber of Commerce turned to Blue River to overhaul its key labor law information site, HRCalifornia.com. The site was designed to be the Chamber’s primary service vehicle for its HR California members, an audience comprised largely of human resource professionals and small business owners.
The Chamber originally built HRCalifornia.com as an electronic vehicle for the organization’s Labor Law Digest, a popular reference tool with comprehensive human resource case studies, checklists and forms. The Chamber wanted to provide this content to existing members, while also creating a new reduced-fee “online” membership centered around the site’s offerings. Ideally, businesses would go online to research anything from hiring policies to sexual harassment and termination. But in reality, focus groups and surveys showed that people found the online information hard to access and difficult to use. The Chamber wanted to know why their most valuable print resource wasn’t translating effectively online and how to give their members the benefits they wanted.
Finding a Common Language
The Chamber’s biggest problem was a common misuse of mediums -- employing a dynamic resource (the Internet) in a static way (traditional reference format). By using the site this way, Cal Chamber’s needs quickly outgrew the HRCalifornia site capabilities. The site’s structure didn’t anticipate the way people searched for information with relevant content usually five or six clicks away.
To make HRCalifornia’s content more accessible, Blue River wanted to know how the Chamber’s employees and its members actually worked with human resource materials. Blue River led a cross-section of the organization’s employees and members through a multi-day “card sort” -- a best-practice exercise that looks at how people naturally group and seek out information.
The card-sorts and accompanying interviews showed that people generally viewed HR topics along an employment lifecycle and thereby searched for information on a case-by-case basis within this context. The stages of the HR lifecycle then represented meaningful content groups for the website. By reorganizing the content accordingly, users would search by these topics and access an overview of all related content in one screen.
Adding Value
Cal Chamber wanted to lay a foundation for future growth by broadening its base of online member services. Building on the site’s new architecture, Blue River proposed a new “Business Resource” section to anticipate a larger scope of professional needs, potentially including accounting and marketing tools as well as human resource information.
To establish the flexibility the Chamber had in mind, Blue River built the Business Resources area to include a decision-tree “wizard” that Chamber staff could alter and apply to various subject matters. These wizards would guide members through decision-making processes involving anything from exempt/non-exempt employment to big picture analysis of their HR compliance. Other new offerings included survey data, reports and service partnership opportunities. With these new features, members would be able to identify specific targets for research and compliance concerns, thereby creating a natural way to guide people back into the HRCalifornia’s primary services and reinforce the site’s relevancy to its audience.
Building Room to Grow
With architecture in place, Blue River directed the conversion of HRCalifornia to a Microsoft content management platform, the same system driving the non-profit’s new online store. This change enabled Chamber employees to add and update HRCalifornia quickly and easily, putting an end to the manual updates and band-aid solutions that had plagued the Chamber’s previous database. For more on the technical integration of this project, please read our California Chamber of Commerce Technical Integration Case Study.
Wrapping it Up With a Great Design
To support the site’s structural and technical changes, Blue River developed a new look to unify the Chamber’s online presence while preserving the distinction between its three sites – a key Chamber priority. The new design clarified and strengthened overall site usability.
Results
Usability tests with prospective and current Chamber members confirmed the site’s success. Both groups found the site much easier to use and of significantly more benefit.
A year after launching HRCalifornia.com, online memberships have increased with HRCalifornia.com cited as the number one reason people now become Chamber members.