USAFacts

When USAFacts began work with us, their vision was clear: help U.S. citizens make informed decisions and engage in fact-based discussions. Through a structured and collaborative process, we helped them reinvent their site while building a larger, more engaged audience.

Client: USAFacts

Audience: The American People

In partnership with Darkhorse Analytics

Project Highlights: Organic new users up year over year 897% — Featured on national news networks — Earned media attention before the President’s State of the Union address — Webby Award Winner.

Steve Ballmer and the USAFacts team started with a clear purpose: help U.S. citizens make decisions and have conversations based on facts. It’s no secret that people rely on social media to inform their points of view. Unfortunately, not every source is reliable as the next. To challenge that, Ballmer set out to build a site that collects and shares unbiased information. But to be effective, it had to be easy to understand.

After the launch of its first version, the audience levelled out. Numbers were not going up. People were confused with the site. Despite best intentions, it wasn’t achieving its goals.

Enter Lift

USAFacts brought Lift on to add clarity to the user experience of the site. As it was, users would visit once and bounce quickly. It did not work fast enough to explain itself and provide useful information. We needed to fix that with a deadline to launch before the President's State of the Union Address.

2020 Webby Award for
Government & Civil Innovation

From ideation and planning to user flows, wireframing and prototyping, we facilitated an efficient process that led to a successful web product informed by strategic collaboration.

Process

To figure out where the challenges originated and how to solve them, we deconstructed the existing site. We considered user paths, how audience members navigate, and how they think about the journey.

We needed to make the user experience effortless.

We explored government data sites. We also looked at niche news and political blogs. Part of our journey included investigating how people digest information. As we worked to cultivate that understanding, we examined multiple presentations of this type of information to discover what produces the most active engagement. This approach has resulted in year over year organic new user growth of 897%, with 36,760 offsite shares to social and other channels. With the State of the Union address looming, the stakes were high. We could not miss the mark.

Challenges and Process

How do you collaborate with stakeholders between two countries and multiple cities? Across great distances, we had to create a collaborative process where all team members brought their best for the website’s noble pursuit. We accomplished this by ensuring we all agreed upon the goals of the project. There may be many ways to get there, but by having a destination, we created a convergence of purpose. After that, our project management teams guided the work flow.

What packaging of facts do citizens respond to more actively?

The process included testing. We had to be ruthless in terms of what stayed from the old site and what needed to go—but always with the agreed upon purpose of creating a non-biased source of data for everyday people.

With time ticking, we needed to move fast.

Execution

From ideation and planning to user flows, wireframing and prototyping, we facilitated an efficient process that led to a successful web product informed by strategic collaboration.

The result is the USAFacts site you see today. Its new features include:

An updated design language
A reimagined navigational structure
Intuitive user flow
Clear presentation of data

The Outcomes and results

The new USAFacts site launched before the State of the Union. It’s been featured on national news outlets, and it is making a measurable impact on political discourse.

897% Organic Growth

1,306% Mobile Organic Growth

36,760 Offsite Shares

3 Webby Award Nominations

1 Webby Award

State Of The Union

Coinciding with the launch of the new website and the president's address to the country, we launched a State of the Union in Numbers special feature. USAFacts has the goal of providing a more standardized set of metrics and measures for citizens to evaluate how the United States is doing as a country.

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