Client Description
NetOne is an elite network founded in 1998 and headquartered in Orlando, Florida, that represents 37 independently owned security companies. Their Shareholder companies are among the top 100 firms in the security industry with more than 14,000 players. Although each member company is its own independent company, under NetOne they all function as a single network, sharing expertise to deliver leading-edge security solutions to their customers.
The Challenge
NetOne operates a Drupal 7 website for members of their network of independently owned security companies for the residential and commercial markets. When NetOne approached DesignHammer they were having multiple usability issues: account registration was confusing and overly complicated, many of the styles were "default Drupal" instead of matching the look and feel of the NetOne theme, and the site was not 100% mobile-ready which created a sub-par experience for an increasing number of mobile users. There were also issues with forum notification emails and MailChimp list subscriptions. In addition to all of this, NetOne needed on-going help maintaining Drupal and working closely with the CTO to create new features to make the NetOne website even more useful for security professionals.
The Solution
DesignHammer helped NetOne through a number of usability audits, where in-person testing was conducted using both a desktop setup with keyboard and mouse, as well as a mobile device that recorded the user's interactions with the website. The usability testing process was able to generate recommendations to help improve the user experience for the NetOne website.
DesignHammer re-wrote a number of NetOne's custom modules, simplifying account registration from three pages down to one, adjusting the forgotten password tool messaging to clarify the process, and cleaning up the user profile editing interface. NetOne's theme stylesheets were converted to using Sass, a CSS preprocessor that makes it easier to organize a highly complex set of styles. DesignHammer web designers created mobile-ready styles to fix the issues discovered during UX testing. The website’s MailChimp integration was rebuilt, to ensure users were subscribed correctly to the NetOne mailing list during registration and profile editing, and also to ensure members were receiving forum notification emails for the user's pre-specified interests.
The Results
DesignHammer continues to work closely with NetOne, creating and maintaining features such as a parts exchange system for sharing inventories, a yearly "Grand Champions" event sub-site with an event registration system, as well as a revamped file resources library.
