The client
bTV is the largest private TV network in Bulgaria. It’s website is among the top 10 of the most visited Bulgarian websites.
The problem
The website was getting bigger and bigger. With news, video, shows, weather and all other kinds of information it has become a really messy experience both for end users as navigation and for the editorial team as maintenance. The biggest pain was the CMS system that didn’t give many options for control over the structure and presentation of the information.
What I did
First were the content audit of the website and the talks with the editors and owners of the website to determine what was right and what was wrong in the current website. I did an Usability heuristics review and presented it to the client. Then we started work on the information architecture and wire-framing. I did a high-level HTML prototype of the site covering the main sections and user flows of interaction with the system. There were quite a few iterations until we agreed on a final version.
Another big and interesting part of the project was the design of a custom CMS that would allow for a full control and flexibility regarding the front-end of the site. I worked closely with the development team at Netage to create a custom solution. The core was a system that relied on multiple templates and widgets for a fully customizable presentation. The built-in features for classifying and then searching and filtering the information made it easy for administrators to create, maintain and manage daily hundreds of peaces of information – news, videos, photos, user generated content etc.
It is worth mentioning that I also worked on the front-end code of the website. As it is a high traffic site it was important to optimize page load times and the load of the servers in order to deliver a quality user experience.
The result
The main btv.bg website has a steady 10% growth month over month with an average of 1 million daily pageviews.
The team behind the site launched half a dozen mini-sites for various shows by themselves, relying on the features of the CMS and no significant customizations.
