Summary

The Expedia Affiliate Network developer site’s architecture and content had expanded organically to the point where it had become unwieldy and difficult to navigate. Updating the site required knowledge of Github and Markdown, access to Expedia's repositories, and publishing changes had to be synchronised with other deployments to Expedia’s servers.

With content designer Charlie Ranlett, I edited over a thousand pages and migrated several hundred to a new content management system, in the process revising the entire information architecture and delivering a fully-responsive site that put users (developers) first, right at the heart of the experience.

Content

Technical writer and editor, Charlie Ranlett, played a critical part to the success of the project by performing an extensive content audit of the existing site. Working together, we edited over a thousand pages of content. This often meant rewriting and combining sections for clarity and brevity. In the end, several hundred pages were migrated to the new CMS.

Information Architecture and User Testing

With the audit complete, I mapped the entirety of the site’s existing information architecture in order to identify commonalities and information groups, eventually leading to a prototype information architecture. I tested this with users (in this case, developers from both Hotels.com and partner sites) in a paper sorting exercise and a clickable prototype. Results of these sessions led to further revision and simplification of the proposed architecture.

Having completed the content audit and new information architecture, I researched delivery methods including building a brand new web application, tied to an open-source CMS. Given the needs of the users and the urgency of the project, I determined that building a new application was not viable, and instead proposed an off-the-shelf, consumer solution.