In this article, I want to share with you the significant changes I made to the Swiss Innovation Academy website, the thinking behind these changes, and what might still change in the future.

Why am I doing a website makeover?

Doing a tiny bit of research

1. Not strong one lead: there wasn't one navigation that most loved in that small sample.
2. New ideas: Some people shared pretty bright thoughts, like presenting the content by experience level.

What's interesting here is not only the numbers but the conversations that this little survey sparked in the comments. Those conversations lead me to these learnings:

1. Topics first: structuring the site with topics as the first way to interact with the content makes a lot of sense for many people. But still, it isn't a considerable percentage where you can say: "Everybody feels like this".
2. Formats as secondary: Once people get in the pages, breaking down the content by format can make sense. So on a Service Design page, I can make a sub-section with "Service Design Books", "Service Design courses", etc.
3. Levels as landing pages: I decided to create two landing pages listed in the footer navigation of the website—one for beginners and one for the nerds. By doing so, I can easily share those pages on social media when I get asked questions by people from these different target groups. Also, those pages might be pretty interesting for google search once I get to write more content there.

The details that come when you build it

1. Help centre: I've updated the layout of the help centre and consolidated parts of it that were on different pages in just one.
2. Tag lines: My content uses a street like a language that is dear to me. I write as I speak, and I talk like I think. It's a simple language that can contain some swear words here and there. So I thought I'd make that clear from the start in the tag lines so that people who get offended by this language leave the website right away and don't get frustrated after spending a lot of time in it.
3. All products: I have so much content, so I thought, why not create one page where I just have everything listed for those people who are just extremely curious.

What's next?

1. Recommended neighbour content: I love the idea of not only showing my products but also those from friends and colleagues who also produce great content that is complementary to mine. I'll try to add those links to each page of the main navigation.
2. Create the principles landing page: I have to figure out how to present the books and resources around the principles series, which will become bigger and bigger over the following years. That's a big challenge.
3. Double-check the products: There are so many products today on the website that I have to check that I didn't forget to show one.
4. Grammar check: I should also do a general grammar check as I've updated many texts without much review.
5. Tiny visual stuff: I should adapt the images formats here and there for more consistency, but that's really the cherry on the cake for the end.