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What: A change in user interface drives a corporate re-org

Women.com was one of the top destinations for women on the web in the dotcom heyday and is now part of iVilliage.

The Challenge: My first assignment at Women.com was to redesign their homepage. At the time, the Women.com homepage was a jumping-off point to Women’s Wire (then their premiere property) as well as five other sites they had acquired. My analysis of the sites revealed that, as the company continued to add new properties, it was becoming difficult for users to find the information they were looking for because it could appear in multiple places (e.g. health content could appear in Women’s Wire, Stork Site or Prevention).

My Role: I pitched Ellen Pack, Women.com’s founder, on the idea of converting from a sites-based structure to a channel-based structure. In doing so, I argued, they could aggregate each of the content areas in one place on the site, "provided by" the appropriate sub-brands.

The Results: The plan was accepted - Women.com took on a new information architecture and had a facelift at the same time. But the changes went beyond the web site. Over the next 24 months, I helped orchestrate and redeploy employees into a new organizational structure that better supported the new channel-based orientation of the company. I also started the Network Architecture Group to ensure continuity of user experience, designed the message board system, and designed a cross-navigation menu system that created horizontal views through the vertically oriented information structure. Women.com is now part of iVillage.