Nationwide.com Insurance and Financial Services 

Impact:

Successfully defined the optimal Information Architecture (IA) for Nationwide.com's redesign, directly impacting over 20 million annual users. An A/B tree test conclusively identified the 'Business Unit-First with Audience Selector' as the superior IA structure, providing the strategic foundation for the site's future design and content strategy.

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This decisive outcome was driven by three core research findings that shaped the design recommendations:

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• IA Structure Validation: The 'Business Unit-First with Audience Selector' IA consistently outperformed the 'Audience-First' model across nearly all audience segments, proving its effectiveness in guiding users. This "winning" structure provided the strategic direction for design and content strategy moving forward in the site redesign.

• Unexpected User Journeys: Users frequently initiated their search on product pages, even for tasks requiring login or specific client-tailored plans. This highlighted a critical need for personalized cross-links and prominent Calls-to-Action (CTAs) to direct users to high-touch areas of the site.

• Terminology Resonance: The term 'Resources' emerged as a highly intuitive label for training materials, documents, tools, and calculators, indicating a clear user expectation for content categorization. This insight led to the recommendation to integrate "Resources" terminology into the winning IA structure.

 

The evaluation involved a rigorous A/B tree test, engaging 100 participants equally split between the two proposed IA structures. These participants represented seven distinct Nationwide customer and professional user groups, ensuring comprehensive and representative insights.

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Context: Nationwide.com, the enterprise site, serves over 20 million active annual users. With a strategic shift towards emphasizing financial services alongside insurance, the site's redesign aimed to meet evolving user expectations and reflect Nationwide's expanded offerings.

 

Research Goal: To evaluate two proposed Information Architecture (IA) and navigation structures to determine which best served users across multiple audience segments, thereby informing the design and content strategy for the entire project.

 

Methodology: Initially, the research plan focused on a single IA structure. However, during the research planning workshop, stakeholders expressed concern that executives might dismiss the findings without a comparative evaluation. To secure executive buy-in, we collaboratively pivoted to an A/B tree test approach, evaluating both proposed IA structures. Tree test tasks were developed in close collaboration with internal stakeholders, first by identifying top tasks for the seven audience segments, then by crafting realistic task scenarios.

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My Role: As the Senior UX Researcher, I solely led and executed this 12-week research effort (January – April 2025) within a broader 20-week engagement. I partnered closely with our Experience Director, Content Strategist, and Data Analyst to refine our two initial IA models and subsequently presented the analysis to inform content decisions and strategy.

 

Challenges & Learnings:  A significant challenge arose when our project sponsor requested a "re-assessment" of the tree test data to potentially "strengthen" the case for the winning model, driven by stakeholder anxiety about executive acceptance. While resistant to manipulating data, I collaborated with my Experience Director and Content Strategist to find an ethical compromise. We broadened the acceptance criteria to include an additional level of "correct" answers, reflecting paths users might take on a live site (e.g., assuming a CTA would be present). This allowed us to address stakeholder concerns about the winning model's perceived success rate without compromising the integrity of participant behavior reporting. This experience underscored the importance of anticipating stakeholder anxieties and finding methodologically sound ways to present data that builds confidence while maintaining research rigor.

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Industry: Insurance and Financial Services​