Juniper.net is pursuing an interesting strategy which I suspect most companies have missed. Last year, it did two things.
It launched a completely new Website in February.
Then it executed a wholesale update in October.
That wouldn’t be important, except for one thing. The October refresh was executed across the entire Website. From top to bottom. From stem to stern.
This, as it turns out, introduces a new design strategy into the mix. Until now, most Website teams have taken an incremental improvement approach, limiting updates and innovations to certain areas of their sites. A new home page; revamped product marketing zones; or a new look and feel for the top three layers of a site. The net result is that users have to re-learn the site every time they move between zones.
In contrast, Juniper.net’s approach is iterative. It’s not interested in hitting solid singles. It goes for the home run.
There are a couple of things to remember here.
Iterative strategies work best with smaller stance Websites; say those at or under 10,000 pages.
Big sites like IBM.com, HP.com, Cisco.com or Microsoft.com? Not a sweet spot. It’s not that they are too big or sprawling to do this (although that’s certainly an issue). It’s that they have way too many warring stakeholders who would rather engage in a food fight, or continue to color outside the lines.
Juniper.net's iterative improvement strategy is paying off (click to see larger version)
For now, Juniper.net’s strategy gives it a decided advantage over Website teams fiddling around the margins. Consider the latest eBusiness Index usability rankings.
Juniper.net jumped from ninth place to first place in the navigation and architecture category (it’s now the site to beat in the IT industry). Basic design has skyrocketed from 16th to fourth place (out of 23 Websites). Product marketing now ranks well within the top ten.
But here’s the real message in these rankings. The days when Websites can deliver a fractured user experience – and get away with it – are gone.
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A thoughtful opinion and ideas I will use on my website. You’ve obviously spent a lot of time on this. Well done!
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[...] CA.com’s new design is consistent across the site; not many page owners missed the memo. CA.com is yet another example of the iterative design strategy we discussed in a recent post. [...]