Promoting the work of green building professionals
The US Green Building Council had an existing website called GBIG, the Green Building Information Gateway, which served as a directory for green building professionals. Guilty of low customer retention, I was asked to conduct research and interviews to tease out how to make the product more successful. After meeting with professionals from ARUP, Gensler, and other firms, we noted that users were successful at setting up a profile and creating a portfolio of green building projects. However, they didn't have a hugely compelling reason to return.
At the same time, the site's blog was filled with regularly updating, yet hard to find content. My recommendation was to invert the information architecture, surfacing this buried content to the homepage and making GBIG into a resource for important news, networking, and professional development. GBIG already had a good reason for folks to come back, they just weren't aware of it. In addition, I audited the UX/UI, making the site more modular, flexible, clean, and appealing.
