World-Class User Experience

Information Architecture

No matter how flashy your design, users need to find what they want quickly — or they'll leave and never come back.

That's why information architecture is the single most important step in building a results-driven, long-lasting Web presence. Our experts will guide you step-by-step, using a methodology called "User-Centered Design."

• Goals and objectives: It all starts here. In everything we do. All your stakeholders will know what you're doing and why, and we'll help you get the buy-in you need to "sell" it to the organization.
• Target audience: Who are your users and what are they looking for? What actions do you want them to take? What will it take to satisfy them? We help you define your target audience and their needs.
• Hierarchy: It might be similar to your old site, or maybe it's better to start from scratch. A fun technique called "card-sorting" is a great way to let all your stakeholders have a say in the outcome. 
• Labeling: We don't overlook the actual words. Choosing the right labels for your navigation scheme can increase task completion by 300%.
• Taxonomy and metadata: Categorizing attributes for all your content isn't the most invigorating part of the process, but you'll be glad you did. It's the foundation for our innovative SmartPanels that dynamically place related content on the fly.

It's a fascinating process — and it works.

Usability

You know everything that's right with your site, but your customers know everything that's wrong. The trapdoors and quirks you've learned to overlook quickly become their headaches and frustrations.

After our usability analysis, you'll know exactly how your site's usability and customer experience stacks up, you'll have recommendations on short-term fixes you can implement right now, and you'll get a roadmap for longer-term fixes that will require a more in-depth redesign.

The Geonetric usability team reviews sites using two methodologies:

• Optimal user experience evaluation: This is a detailed analysis of each key page of your site, based on our three core design principles: differentiating needs, establishing outcomes and guiding behaviors. The end result is a personalized site experience with clear, concise calls-to-action based on the individual user's foreseen needs.
• Heuristic evaluation: A heuristic evaluation is a variation of usability inspection where usability specialists judge whether each element of a user interface follows established usability principles.

These simple yet valuable tools demonstrate exactly how your site measures up.

Accessibility

How much do you know about Section 508 accessibility standards?

Under Section 508 (29 U.S.C.794d), federal agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others.

Section 508 standards are designed to eliminate barriers and they're a great way to make sure your patients can read the home page, find a doctor's phone number or submit a form — no matter what kind of physical limitations they might have.

Geonetric implements a rigorous testing and development process to ensure your site is compliant, including:

• Compliant use of Flash and other animation
• Appropriate code and image tagging
• Use of W3C standard HTML within publicly accessible pages
• Screen reader compatibility compliance
• Color-blind testing

We have resident experts on staff who are trained to design fully accessible Web sites, video and multimedia. We also provide education to your team on proper content structure (use of headings, alt tags, etc.) to achieve Section 508 compliance.