The New USAMRAA website
The United States Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity got a face-lift.
The United States Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity got a face-lift.
No, this is not my design.
This was the USAMRAA homepage until it was replaced by my new design. The site made use of iFrames (menu on left in one and the body in another ). On top of that it had a really blue marbled background and beveled buttons. If I recall correctly, it had not changed much since 2001 or so. (Thanks to the waybackmachine.org for making this awesome screenshot possible.)
When I started with this project, my aim was to modernize the site, reorganize the content and give it a new robust back-end. I started doing research on USAMRAA and what the purpose of the activity was. Their main purpose is to process contracts for the U.S. Army Medical Command (MEDCOM). Definitely and organization that deserved a better website in my mind. Of the twenty or so designs I came up with for the site, I narrowed it down to three that I presented the client with. The finished site is a combination of the elements of two of those designs.
The new design first makes it clear that you are on the USAMRAA website, you can see their coin logo, full name and typical military acronym. Secondly, you see the main navigation below that, clearly defining areas of the website. Down below the header and main navigation is a fixed three column layout. Starting on the left are popular links, that according to analytics were the most visited pages or links on the site. They are placed in a column separately and given distinction via the arrow graphic and different column background color. The second column are links deemed 'Important' by the client. These are links to parts of the website or other sites that would be of use to people visiting the USAMRAA website. They are even plainly labeled with the header 'Important Links', no reason to be coy there.. just say it like it is. The last of the three columns is an area with more dynamic content, content that contains notices or updates about recently update policies or government regulations. The column is also anchored by the USAMRAA mission statement.
The new USAMRAA homepage; better organized, more intuitive layout and Section 508 compliant.
Notice the arrow graphics? You can find them at the AIGA webiste ( http://www.aiga.org/symbol-signs/ )
This new design compared to the old design is truly night and day. No more beveled buttons with roll-overs, no inaccessible iframes to deal with. In the development of the new back-end to serve up this new design I was thinking about search engine optimization, section 508 compliance and making the site easier to maintain.
To that end, the new back-end features simple WYSIWYG editors for entering content (similar to Joomla and Wordpress). Also, the templating system automatically populates ALT and TITLE tags. Page descriptions are stored along side other page details so that you don't have one generic site description that is spread across all pages. Along those lines, the 'Contact Webmaster' contact form was updated to help visitors and to make tracking incoming queries simpler. The form itself features input validation and anti-spam features. The form cannot be submitted with the required fields being populated. The input from the fields is sanitized to remove any possible malicious content before processing the form. To make life harder for spam bots, there is a simple math problem at the bottom of the form, if not filled out or answered correctly the form contents cleared without being sent.
The changes to the contact form have greatly reduced spam coming into the webmaster and have also helped in keeping valid communications concise.
A new easy to read contact form with input validation, and anti-spam features.
The results from the re-design have been quite dramatic over the last 2 1/2 years since it was initially launched. Search engine traffic has gone up by about 600% and far fewer emails come into the webmaster asking where to find something on the website. Most questions now are related to the mission of the client and not the function of the website. Total traffic to the site has tripled, which is likely due to the increased accessibility by search engines and the new simpler logical layout. In the end, the client is happy and another government website functions better.
