Portfolio: NorthernLight.com home page redesign

NorthernLight.com hadn't revised the home page for their public search site in a long time. It needed a complete overhaul because, as with many home pages, it didn't describe the business well. Also, the color scheme was outdated and the organization was no longer clear because they had added a lot of features over the years.

Major benefits.  The new design describes all of the major features of the site so users recognize their importance. The page uses simple visual design techniques to organize the page and updates the color palette. All in all, it tells the story of the site better. (Unfortunately, they changed their business model when Divine bought the company and never implemented this, although they liked it quite a bit.)

Showing off the search capabilities.  Most site visitors want to do a quick search and get results. We kept the basic search field at the top of the page, but clarified the other search choices that were there.

Blue Custom Search Folders are very important, but were never mentioned on the home page. They're used to group search results into categories. This design introduces the icon and describes the feature right where people type the search query.

The home page introduces one of the most important features: Custom Search Folders.
Users are more likely to recognize them later after seeing the graphic and text here.

Special features unique to Northern Light.  Northern Light's unique features are more clearly organized, with the most important ones shown first, guaranteed to be "above the fold." Other, more common features, are further down.

The first group includes Special Editions (detailed searches on important topics created by research staff) and free searching of news headlines that go further back than at other sites.

Links to browse the Web database and the Special Collection (a group of thousands of business and science periodicals) are featured in the second section of special features.

The things that only NorthernLight.com has stand out because they're at the top of the page

Personal links and featured search. The Personal Links section offers important choices related to the current user's account. The original design mixed other choices in with this.

We added a spot for a Featured Search, which shows off one of the many search types the site offers. It can rotate on a regular basis, to help promote the site and its capabilities.

Marketing information. The marketing information is now all together, and at the bottom of the page. That puts it out of the way of regular search users, but where business people know to look.

The new design provides the appropriate balance between marketing and search information.

Compare the old and the new.  These images compare the original and final designs. It was hard to tell what was special about NorthernLight in the original, and features were not well organized.

Before we started, the home page wasn't well organized...

...but in the final design, everything had a clear place on the page.

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