Why we did this work
Previous research found that users need a mix of inspirational, reassuring, and informative content on the site. Some users want to explore content related to the realities of teaching to understand how it fits their circumstances and aspirations, while others need inspirational content alongside other types of content.
The “Is Teaching Right for Me” title often confused users, with some dismissing it because they already knew teaching was right for them. Many users were unclear about what to expect from this section.
Most of our inspirational content was in the existing blog section, but it did not receive much engagement or provide significant value to our users.
Our blog posts looked the same as our informative content, making it hard for users to differentiate between informational and inspirational pieces. We aimed to address this issue by creating a new design to our blog posts.
How we approached it
Section name
We explored other section titles that would more accurately describe the content and how we wanted to meet user needs. We were able to test our top choice ‘Life as a teacher’ as part of a wider user research round, where users navigated to the content within the section intuitively and didn’t raise concerns or confusion over the section title.
Blogs
We audited the blog section to assess whether content could be repurposed or should be removed. We categorised blog content into standalone blogs that could be repurposed into case studies and made more visible to users, content within blogs that could be used as quotes, and content that should be removed as it didn’t meet user needs.
Information hierarchy and new components
We decided to add sub-category pages to make it easier for users to find what they need. Without these, navigation would be too long and complicated, especially as we add more content like additional subject pages and blogs.
We added images to the card component to make the sub-category section look different from the rest of the site.
We included sub-category pages to display content alongside inspirational content. To highlight inspirational content, we used colour and content, such as pink headings and tiles like ‘Teacher insights’.
Additionally, we designed a component to be used on other areas of the site that could link back to some of the inspirational content.
What’s next?
We will test this alongside other work and monitor its effectiveness through data analysis, to consider if we will use similar patterns in other areas of the site.