RAGHUNATHAN G

MedGenome.com Website Redesign: Reducing Page Load Time from 40 Seconds to Under 2 Seconds

Overview

Medgenome.com website was designed by an external agency using wordpress theme. We had to re-design the same as its performance was very poor (Almost 40sec page load speed of homepage). Also content were not available as per the appropirate cateogries

Leading a cross-functional team to transform a critical healthcare website performance, resulting in dramatic improvements in user experience and business metrics.

Timeline

8 weeks (Sep - Oct 2015)

Role

As UX Manager, I led a cross-functional team of 6 members including developers, UX designers, and QA engineers. I was responsible for:

  • Strategic planning and stakeholder alignment
  • Team coordination and resource management
  • Performance optimization strategy
  • Quality assurance and user testing oversight

The Problems

Limitations of the current wordpress template as reported by the agency people

This theme is pirated, we had inherited and improvised on the same.

Outdated theme.

Because of the piracy, we were finding it difficult to update feature like security updates, plugin updates etc.

Lots of responsive design isseus: Eg; Menu and sitemap structure for mobile was confusing and not responsive and SEO optimised.

Browser compatibility issuse with safari browser (MAC).

Solution

Limitations of the current wordpress template as reported by the agency people

Hence designed the new website in which page download speed was less than 2 seconds and it was also responsive and browser compatible with safari.

As per usability testing since page loading time was less and navigation was easy to understand user could perform their task quickly and efficiently, hence the user were satisfied with overall website performance

Strategic Approach

As UX Manager, I developed a comprehensive strategy that balanced technical optimization with user experience improvements while managing stakeholder expectations and team resources.

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Team Leadership

Assembled and coordinated a cross-functional team of front-end developers, UX designers, and QA engineers. Established clear communication channels and sprint-based workflows to ensure rapid iteration.

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Stakeholder Alignment

Collaborated with Marketing head and business stakeholders to define success metrics. Prioritised features based on user impact and technical feasibility, ensuring buy-in at every stage.

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Performance Strategy

Defined aggressive but achievable performance targets. Implemented iterative testing and optimization cycles with clear benchmarks for each sprint.

Output from stakeholder meeting

What is the business objective?

  1. First objective was to improve the performance of website by improving the download speed (Less then 3 seconds) along with browser compatibility
  2. Improve the content architecture

Who are the users?

  1. Primary users are : Doctors, Research Scientists

What value will be delivered to them,

  1. Better user experience by making responsive and fast loading user friendly website with relevant information as required by them

What are success metrics

  1. Website loading time should be less than 3 seconds

Design Process

Identified different types of users and did user interview

Identified their key goals /Critical activities along with their knowledge about the technologies and the envirnoment they will be operating Identifying their motivation, their likes about exisiting site and pain points/frustations etc.

Competitive analysis of other genetic websites

Team did the competitive analysis of other international genetic website from content (Key features and content), SEO and performance perspective.

Led comprehensive the content audit of existing website

  1. Had to retain old content in many pages
  2. Replaced new content in few pages instead of old content
  3. Added all the new content and features required for the new website

Team conducted the card sorting activities for organising and labelling the content as per the user requirement

Directed the team in restructuring site navigation and content hierarchy. Collaborated with stakeholders to simplify complex medical information while maintaining accuracy.

  1. Collected all the contents and grouped them into different categories but labelling for group was not clear
  2. Did closed card sorting for labelling the group to get new labels
  3. After grouping the contents and labelling was done did a remote click tree testing using trello to check how much time user took to find a specific content
  4. Created the page level navigation using the grouping and created the sitemap

Navigation design

Since the global navigation didn’t have too many options we opted for Horizontal navigation with sub-menu options

Page design and content for individual pages

Once the content for all the individual pages were finalised we quickly designed the wireframe and did the usability testing of the pages and updated those recommendations as per the testing feedback.

Clickable prototype

After getting the feedback on the wireframes designers created Clickable prototypes and did the usability testing for functionalities, flexibility, find abilty, error rate and satisfaction

Visual design mockup and HTML files

Created the visual mockup and got the final signoff from users and business stakeholders

Created HTML files and converted them into PHP for website launch

My team member created the HTML files and integrated with Php coding to be launched on website

Technical Optimisation

Coordinated with development team on code optimization, image compression, and implementation of modern web performance best practices including lazy loading and CDN integration.

Sitemap

india-website

Screenshot of the old website

website

Screenshot of the new website

website

Impact

40s → 2s

Page Load Time

95% improvement in loading speed

100%

Responsive

Fully responsive across all devices

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Browser Compatible

Safari compatibility achieved

Impact

Page load time reduced to less than 3 seconds as tested on third party application. Users were satisfied with overall website performance due to faster loading times and easy-to-understand navigation.

Key Learnings

Leadership Insights