Case study: U.S. News & World Report

A Siteworx redesign helps reinforce the brand, unlock "buried" content and optimize search.

The Challenge:

U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) weekly magazine is a trusted and reliable source for original, agenda-setting reporting for more than 11 million readers. With more than 8 million monthly visitors, usnews.com is a critical component of the U.S. News brand.

U.S. News needed a new site design that would reflect its deep knowledge of its audience preferences and expectations. Because the site had grown organically, branding and design was sometimes inconsistent depending on where visitors landed, reducing visitor time on the site and limiting the ability to cross-promote content. In addition, the site's search capability needed an upgrade to reflect the full depth of content available while ensuring an appropriate balance of paid and free content to avoid disappointing non-subscribers who come to the site for news and information.

The Siteworx Approach:

Siteworx used a multi-phased approach to ensure the redesign delivered on the U.S. News brand promise--original, credible, clear-cut, and forward-focused reporting--starting with a complete audit and analysis of the current site. Siteworx User Experience experts completed a detailed SWOT analysis against U.S. News' major competitors to ensure the new design included best practices and avoided common pitfalls in news and media websites. Through the discovery process, Siteworx learned that U.S. News needed to showcase its popular rankings offerings while also highlighting its highly-credible news and editorial content.

The Result:

The new, more unified site architecture and design make the site easier to navigate and find key information, while giving the framework they needed to make frequent, timely site updates to attract new and repeat visitors. Popular news features such as "most viewed" and "most e-mailed" were added to the home page to further drive traffic and stickiness on the site. The visual design now strikes an elegant balance ensuring that rankings and news are front and center above the fold and in the site's navigation to drive cross-promotion of content and better serve readers' needs and interests.