Building an Interactive Microsite
We built an interactive microsite for a federal health agency’s flagship National Health Observance (NHO) campaign. It was a collaborative effort between the extended client team and 4 contractors. Each contract team owned one component of the website — we owned digital strategy and design and the other teams each owned content strategy, web development, and user-experience research.
Overview
The Why: Research has shown that doing certain healthy behaviors (like exercising) is easier with social support and personal networks. For their flagship NHO, our client wanted to encourage people to be healthy together. They wanted to build a “hub” where people will connect with others, find encouragement, and collectively build a healthy movement.
Solution: We built a website with an interactive map that aggregated social media information, providing a snapshot of everyone who was engaging with the NHO’s unique hashtag around the country. It also showed a list of upcoming events that people can participate in.
Outcome: We delivered the microsite on-time and true to the original vision, despite the short timeline.
Site Components
The microsite has an interactive map of the United States. It contains markers that indicate:
Events happening around the country relating to the NHO
Social media posts where people are using the campaign hashtag on Facebook and Twitter
The site also had a social feed, which used a social media aggregator tool to pull in Facebook and Twitter posts that contained the campaign hashtag. A separate events feed displayed upcoming events and offered a form for the public to submit their future events.
User Experience Research
We developed wireframes and conducted user experience research to test the site’s usability, understand users’ perceptions and expectations, and to inform future improvements to the site.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
We tested the site’s functionality before launch. During this process, we identified causes and proposed solutions to problems uncovered during UAT.
Backlog and Maintenance
We developed a backlog for web updates and a maintenance schedule to address any content or tech modifications.
The microsite included an interactive map that displayed events around the country and social media posts that included the campaign hashtag.