Content strategy, mapping and modelling in overhauling agricorp.com

This was a year-long project I worked on from start to finish, involving a new content management system, all new content, and shifting from internal categories and mental models to a user-centred information architecture.

I helped select and work with external usability consultants and external specialists in customizing SharePoint. The usability consultants conducted user research and completed a heuristic analysis of our previous site, and created user-tested wireframes with recommendations.

Identifying and meeting user needs

Knowing that our primary user group, Ontario farmers, came to our site to find out what programs they could participate in and program deadlines, we prioritized two parts of the home page:

  • a tool for users to choose the commodities they grow that gives them applicable programs instead of forcing them to browse a list of our programs and plans
  • a deadline calendar that appears on nearly every page of the site, driven by a single source of content but with slightly different content displaying in each different usage scenario.
screen shot of agricorp.com home page after the overhaul

Complex mapping and modelling of deadline content

In addition to mapping, writing and editing the deadline content for each different context, I worked with developers to define requirements for the calendar functionality.

Close-up view of the deadline calendar on the home page
When you hover over a highlighted date in the calendar, additional details pop up. In this instance the text needed to display the program’s acronym, since all program deadlines appear here.

The content for the deadline calendars was particularly complex to sort out, because one of our key, most complex programs, AgriStability, has an 18-month business cycle, so that two program years are in effect at any point in time. As well, Production Insurance isn’t actually a single program but a group of about 50 insurance plans for different commodities, all with their own terms, coverage details and deadlines, and some commodities can be covered in different ways by multiple plans.

Screen shot of AgriStability deadline page on agricorp.com
In this instance, the deadline calendar in the upper right corner only displays this particular program’s deadlines. The content in the main deadline table also comes from the same source, and in this case was written without the program name since it occurs within the context of the specific program.
screen shot of Production Insurance deadline page on agricorp.com
Production Insurance is actually made up of about 50 separate plans, some of which cover multiple crops, and many of which have different deadlines, sometimes even within the same plan for different crops. I sorted all that out to create the content to populate the table for each crop and plan.

Content strategy for corporate content

We also identified job seekers as a secondary user group, especially since we were growing rapidly at the time, and I created the content strategy for corporate content to meet job seekers’ needs. Because we were so busy figuring out the information architecture, content mapping and sharing, and requirements for customizing the content management system, I selected, guided and edited the work of an external writer to ensure our corporate content was available on time and on brand.

Governance to maintain quality into the future

I also documented our content decisions as we went, which fed into a suite of governance documents (including style guides, editorial policies, roles and responsibilities, and procedures) to ensure the site content remains easy to find and use and relevant well into the future.