IQ Interactive Special Report: About Face

Unlike some dot-coms that perform superficial face-lifts to spark renewed interest, About.com's decision to redesign wasn't born out of whimsy or boredom. Still fairly young, the New York-based company was anything but an old debutante longing to spruce up its looks by going under the technological knife. As a network of more than 700 topic-specific vertical sites manned by experts or "guides" who provide original content, related links and interaction, About.com wanted the redesign to convey that the site was the destination for information. About.com has evolved since its inception. The site debuted in February 1997 as the Mining Company, a name that alluded to its roots of "mining" the Web for information. Since then, the site has transformed itself from a traditional portal service to one populated by real people who personalize--even humanize--the Internet experience. The site's 700 guides cover an eclectic range of topics, from economics and ecology to Shakespeare and soap operas. Unlike search engines or directories, the guides sift through the Web to find the best links, news and content on their topics, providing human judgment and integrity. In addition, they write original, timely and relevant content for their sites. "The guides started to write some great stories," says Chris Briggs, creative director for About.com. "A lot of guides have gems of knowledge that should be brought to the surface." To reflect the shift in focus and better communicate its topical approach, the company changed its name to About.com in May 1999. However, the name change was not enough. The site's old, drab design, reflective of its portal origins, failed to impart About.com's new content-heavy, one-stop-shop nature. So, seven months later a redesign began. It would be a six-month journey--a lengthy one by Internet standards. "It's like a pregnancy," John Caplan, general manager and chief marketing officer at About.com, commented at one point. "We watch it evolve week by week." A new look Early November 1999--Initial plans for the network's redesign begin. Shying away from hiring outside consultants, About.com decides to perform the bulk of the project internally. "Outside consultants didn't really work," explains Briggs. "They didn't know who we really were." With several hundred guides and associate guides, and upward of 12.6 million visitors per month, the redesign team wants to please all their constituents. So the company holds focus groups with all involved parties to determine the goals of the new design. Late November 1999--With the conceptualization period behind them, About.com commences the site overhaul. The first issue of business is to tie the Net links and articles together under one roof in order to create a more cohesive, news-site-type look. It is a slight change, but a substantial one. "This was part of the impetus of the redesign in the first place," explains Briggs. Rather than housing the components under one heading, the old design separated articles from Net links, creating a disconnected, list-like look. The redesign team then plays with the site's color palette, trying to create a warm, open feel, rather than a cold, reference-like one. "We wanted to make the look fun and friendly," Briggs says. The design team adds a deep, richly colored red bar across the top and bottom, straying from the site's traditional gray and white color scheme. January 2000--The redesign group has to concern itself with site aesthetics, but also with site content and back-end intricacies that make the network a well-oiled machine. "In many Web sites, redesign would be more about design," explains Briggs. "We are also concentrating on how to build the back end with tools that allow guides to update information minute to minute." The techies start the back-end work. "We took it as an opportunity to put in place what we've been wanting to do for a long time," explains Sara Plath, About.com vice president of systems operations. "[With the new design], the guides will be able to update their content more frequently and easily." function follows technology In tweaking the technology, About.com seeks to improve its functionality for the guides who create and maintain their own Web pages, freeing them to concentrate on content rather than site setup. With the old design, the guides performed the brunt of the work in developing their pages. "We want to give the guides a system that enables them to publish and edit content with little training," says Caplan. The team develops a template for the guides that makes it easy for them to add and remove content on their pages. The new format allows the guides to rotate content in and out of their sites, as well as to plan ahead. For instance, a guide could write a piece and schedule it to replace the second article on their Web page immediately or wait until Dec. 25, 2000 at 10 p.m. The article would then appear on the page in the place designated and on the date and time specified by the guide. "This keeps the content fresh," says Jim Scollins, About.com vice president of guide operations. Early February 2000--With the initial changes made, About.com decides to solicit feedback from its users--an unusual and frightening move for the dot-com, but one that is deemed necessary. "We're trying to build a direct relationship with the consumers. We did it out of respect for our users," explains Caplan. "We hung our underpants out by asking them what they think." About.com's MP3/MIDI music site serves as the testing ground for the redesign. Visitors to About.com are encouraged to log on to the MP3 site and offer feedback. "We were all holding our breath when we did this by putting ourselves out there [for feedback]," admits Briggs. Reactions vary from contempt for fooling around with perfection to reassurance that About.com was headed in the right direction. substance and style Most of the feedback focuses on cosmetic changes rather than content. Some consumers think the new site is too cluttered. "Here, the consumers were comparing it to the old, sparse, very geometrical site," says Briggs. Some also dislike the new color scheme, claiming it is "too much." Other visitors call the site "too busy." To the team's surprise, no one comments on the combination of Net links and articles--a content modification, not a shallow surface alteration. Mid-February 2000--With the feedback they've received in mind, the redesign team returns to the drawing board to produce a revised version. During this phase, the team focuses on long horizontal bars, tagged "In the Spotlight" and "Essentials," to provide users with an entry point and a natural place to rest. Under the headings, the guides highlight articles or links that they deem timely or pertinent. Playing on the personalization component of About.com, the team also places the picture of the guide higher up on the page, so the guide appears to be an integral part of the experience, rather than an afterthought. "Every change has made the site better, not generic," says Briggs. Early March 2000--About.com rolls out the back-end tool, which allows the guides to create their sites, to 25 willing guinea pigs and anxiously awaits their reaction. "The guides love it," reports Caplan. "I've never seen them this excited. Many guides want to change the design now." But, About.com hesitates, not wanting to jump the gun. "We're pushing to go live when it's perfect," says Caplan. new business models Mid-March 2000--About.com is almost locked in on a design. "The structure is there," says Briggs. "We're just working with the fine-tuning and HTML." But they must first incorporate aspects introduced by changes to About.com's business model. On March 16, About.com unveils its Luna Network, a marketing program that bonds About.com's topic sites with related independent sites on the Web. The Luna Network was designed to expand the About.com experience, build reciprocal traffic between About.com's topic sites and its Luna partners and attract advertisers to a targeted venue. In the program, About.com hosts a partnership box on each of the Luna partner sites, allowing users to link to relevant About.com topic sites and related subject articles. For instance, an About.com box resides on Stockcharts.com, driving traffic to its Stocks home page. In return, the About.com Stocks home page then sends traffic back to Stockcharts.com by offering its link to visitors. To include the Luna Network in the redesign, the About.com group places a partnership box in the lower left-hand corner of its pages. Early April 2000--About.com introduces Sprinks--sponsored contextual links, which are advertiser initiated, sold online and dynamically priced. Intended to attract a qualified audience, the new advertising vehicle provides targeting opportunities for advertisers, as well as a way for visitors to connect with merchants that serve their interests. The new advertising program poses yet another challenge to the redesign team. To avoid a disjointed look, the redesign team has to blend the sponsored links seamlessly into the pages. In order to accomplish this, they place the links on the lower half of the page within a separate box. The text and colors of the Sprinks box coordinate with the rest of the content items, skirting the screaming tendencies of some advertising. final countdown As the redesign launch date (April 11) draws near, About.com pushes the homepage building tool out to the rest of its more than 700 guides. For the most part, everyone is happy. Scollins is relieved. "There are some old-school HTML purists that would rather create the pages by hand, but they all understand the benefits," he says. The revised back-end technology "allows us to have people as guides who really don't know much about HTML," adds Plath. April 3, 2000--Just eight days before the launch of the redesigned site, About.com subjects the site to one more test. A focus group of five Web users, who are first-time visitors to About.com, are enlisted to visit About's Hawaii home page as the redesign team at About.com observes their behavior. The volunteers immediately go to the left-hand side to the subject column, followed by the "In the Spotlight" and "Essentials" sections, reports Briggs. They then scroll down. "We didn't lose anybody by putting anything below the fold," he adds. With the focus group in mind, the redesign team makes some minor changes, one of which was renaming the "Discover More" box. Residing on the right-hand side of the page, the "Discover More" box suggests other sites on the About.com network for the user to check out based on the site they were visiting. For instance, if a user is on the Hawaii site, the box might suggest that they visit another tropical site. However, the users didn't understand what "Discover More" meant. So, the redesign team changes the name to "Related Sites on About.com," and puts the links in a gray box to make it more consistent with the rest of the page. Aside from trivial questions, the focus group reconfirms that the About.com redesign team put together a winning formula. "We didn't see anything that was a global breakdown," says Briggs. About.com was ready to unveil its new look. April 11, 2000--D-day. The redesign goes live, without a hitch. April 12, 2000--The redesign team takes the day off. n

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IQ Interactive Special Report: About Face

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