Guardian Unlimited

The brief: Help Guardian Unlimited to refresh their website, making it integrate better with the evolving needs of its visitors.

Media consumption patterns are changing, with people spending more time online and collaborating more broadly in generating and filtering content.

Guardian Unlimited approached Flow to help them with a user-centred redesign of their website. They wanted the new site to:

• Integrate more effectively with other media on the web.
• Involve the audience more in generating and prioritising content.
• Improve the findability of their broad range of content.
• Improve revenue through increased traffic and more effective promotions.

We did research, workshops, prototype design and testing to provide a solid framework for the redesign.

Flow began with some lab-based research to find out how users interact with news, sport and travel content on- and offline. We also tested the user experience offered by the current site and explored people's usage of some of the newest web phenomena.

Next came concept workshops with the Guardian team including commercial, editorial, design and technical staff. We used the research to help us draw up personas (profiles of the most challenging target users) and identify how they would want to use the site. From there, the team worked together to explore new concepts for the site and the user experience. We engaged editors from across all the different sections in building rough prototypes of the most challenging areas of the site. Then Flow worked with Guardian Unlimited's design team to draw up the prototypes in detail, ready for usability testing.

Guardian Unlimited increased traffic by 55% compared to the same month the previous year.

Guardian Unlimited first rolled out the new designs on their travel section in November 2006. They saw an increase in traffic of over 55% for January compared to the year before.

As a benchmark, average growth for the rest of the Guardian Unlimited network was around 15% across the same period – already an excellent figure. But the travel section grew over 250% faster than the rest of the network.

Based on the feedback from users, Guardian Unlimited also created and tested a new strategy for generating ad revenue. They introduced contextually-relevant, text-only ads, and worked to integrate commercial partners more fully into the site design. There's also a new strategy for the use of banner advertising on the homepage.

Guardian Unlimited are continuing to work with Flow on the rollout of other parts of the site.

"The new knowledge we gained from working with Flow helped us evolve how we use advertising on our site and better promote the services we offer. The new approach is radically different and already proving very successful."
– Tristan Leaver, Head of Business Development, Guardian News and Media