Industry

General Government Agency, Small Business Development, Online Community, Open Source Drupal Development

Platform

Website Evaluation, UX Strategy, Product Definition, UI Design, Development Support

Partners

Promet Source

THE U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION’S (SBA) website, SBA.gov, is a significant part of the agency’s communication and service delivery platform. The website is critical in supporting the agency’s mission to provide timely, accurate and relevant information to the nation’s more than 29 million small businesses, most of whom use the site as a primary source for SBA information.

THE CHALLENGE

SBA’s user experience goals were to improve SBA.gov to make it more user-centric and focused on the needs of small businesses. The Limina team was brought in by DRT Strategies to conduct a UX evaluation, design, and develop a new website that would merge key elements of SBA’s two existing sites, Business.gov and SBA.gov along with their micro-sites onto a single Drupal site.  The new site would additionally incorporate innovative and meaningful tools and features, and effectively deliver information and services to its users.

OBSERVE & ANALYZE

The initial phase of the project was to analyze both SBA.gov and Business.gov to identify traffic trends, overlapping content and to chart a migration plan which included blogging, social-web tools and a robust on-line business community.  

ForeSee feedback metrics showed that users resoundingly expressed a lack of confidence in the website’s ability to provide access to relevant material in a timely and accessible way.  Our analysis goals were to determine specific UX factors that contributed to this perception.

Our audit included a comprehensive technical memo outlining issues and recommendations for:

  • Branding and Visual Design
  • Information Architecture
  • Workflow and Navigation
  • Page Layout and Templates
  • General Consistency and Usability
  • Additional opportunities for enhancement

ENVISION & DESIGN

Limina provided design concepts for the new look of SBA.gov, SBAdirect UX features and visual mockups for featured content promotions.  Additionally, our team provided guidance on the selection of Drupal modules and configuration to support the migration.

Activities Performed

  • Wireframing
  • Visual Mockups
  • UI Specification

EVALUATE & REFINE

After the initial launch, Limina continued to support ongoing efforts to maintain a queue of featured content promotions and visual asset production.

THE SOLUTION

The project successfully migrated two disparate sites to a dynamic, interactive, extensible and open content management system (Drupal).  The enhanced CMS allowed for the introduction of social web tools; content rating, community forum, blogging, and social distribution.  

Additionally, we implemented  SBADirect (now Local Assistance), which takes a user centered approach of delivering SBA content, services and locations based on specific small business needs and criteria filters.

With the launch of the new SBA.gov, we have reached a significant milestone in how the agency has evolved in using interactive web tools, social media and blogs to engage with, and better meet the needs of small business owners. With the new improved SBA.gov, business owners can access the answers they need, specific to their business profile, in an instant- it truly presents the face of the future of SBA.
Karen Mills
SBA Administrator

As an 8(a) small business government contractor, we continue to have a vested interest in SBA.gov’s adoption of e-Gov Delivery.  See our Everyday UX post about SBA’s Dynamic Small Business Search application.