A Strategic Homepage Redesign for Enhanced User Experience

National Public Media (NPM) is a full-service corporate sponsorship organization working with brands, agencies, producers, and broadcasters to develop campaigns that deliver on sponsor objectives while fueling the mission of public media. NPM designs multi-market campaigns with public media stations around the country and is the sole sponsorship representative for the NPR Network, which connects with a weekly audience of 46 million across various platforms.

Our early work with their team began when they came to us in need of a new vendor to support and maintain the NPM WordPress site. During that time, our responsibilities involved routine updates to the site’s core and plugins, as well as responding to their requests for enhancements. 

As part of these requested enhancements, we designed and built a new ‘Pressroom’ component that highlights external articles and links, bypassing the previous constraint that only permitted linking to internal posts. In addition, we introduced the option for all audio modules to include written transcripts, significantly improving the site’s accessibility and user engagement.

Up until this point, enhancements had often been specific asks made by their team that we then clarified before building. Other times, the requests were more goal-oriented, and we worked together to formulate a solution. However, most recently, their team came to us with a question: “How can we promote timely content - e.g., new insights posts, reports, videos - so they are more easily findable from the homepage?”

In order to clearly define the goals and requirements of this request, our UX team collaborated with the NPM stakeholders to explore a range of viable solutions. During our initial deliberations, we considered two options: either updating and reusing an existing component or constructing a new, multifaceted component that could accommodate any type of featured content. 

However, it quickly became evident that, while potentially effective in the short term, neither approach would adequately fulfill the organization’s long-term needs. This realization led us to pitch an alternative solution - why not redesign the entire homepage instead? Such a transformation would align their team’s vision of generating a powerful impression of NPM and quickly guide users to the content they are looking for.

To work within the stipulated budget, we provided a set of questions for the NPM team to discuss internally. Some of these questions included:

1. What are the goals for the homepage?
2. Who are your key audiences?
3. Besides what we've talked about so far, are there specific pieces of content (or functionality) that you know you want to add or remove?

Upon receiving their responses, our strategists led a discussion with stakeholders to finalize project objectives and conducted a spectrum poll to define desired design updates.  Armed with these insights, we crafted two renditions of the redesigned homepage, each reflecting NPM's existing branding but showing the various nuanced ways to feature content. By presenting our designs side-by-side, we gave their team the freedom to identify and select (or combine) their favored aspects from each, fostering the development of a bespoke solution tailored to their unique needs.

In reimagining the National Public Media homepage, we have collectively strengthened the organization’s position as an industry leader in the media landscape. Visitors to the site can now easily explore sponsorship platforms, directly access information on sponsorship products, and view NPM’s latest insights and successes. 

Above all, this endeavor highlights how a strategic redesign of even a single webpage can significantly elevate the overall user experience and maximize impact.