Transforming the ExtraHop Blog: A Journey Through Content Strategy, Data and Design
ExtraHop's blog page is a highly trafficked area of the website. By leveraging data collection tools such as HotJar and Parsley, we were able to analyze and identify the shortcomings of the previous blog. With this information, I successfully revamped the blog hub page and its content pages to cater better to the user experience. The redesigned pages were aimed at increasing engagement and improving the user's learning experience during their visit.
Below is the old design
The Start
Based on my newfound knowledge, I was eager to create a unique design that deviated from the traditional white paper approach used by our competitors. I was determined to incorporate an element of entertainment value into our content. Through research, I observed that a significant majority of blog pages were visually uninteresting and lacked a visual hook.
I dove deeper into the user interface/user experience (UI/UX) options employed by entertainment platforms such as HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and Xbox Live. By leveraging their strategies, I sought to develop a content format that was not only informative but also engaging and entertaining for our target audience.
Content page
During the design and research phase for the blog content page, I noticed that the adage "no one reads, they only skim" was extremely accurate. Upon reviewing user recordings, it became apparent that users often scrolled through pages very quickly, indicating a consistent pattern.
To address this issue, I introduced a TL;DR (too long; didn't read) button at the top of the page, which anchored to the bottom of the page and provided a brief summary paragraph. My goal was to ensure that users did not waste their time and left the page with some key information.
Additionally, I implemented the POI (point of interest) text highlight feature, which highlighted the critical elements of each paragraph for our skimming readers. This feature aimed to prevent users from wasting their time by ensuring that they left the page with the essential information.
- Concept
