Have you noticed anything different about www.innerworkings.com? Please say yes, as we’ve spent several months working on a completely fresh presentation of the company website. Last weekend, after a few Wimbledon-inspired rain delays, we launched the company’s new website. In a word, this project was “AGILE” from the outset and geared towards continual refinement until the day of reckoning arrived. Actually, the tinkering will continue for some time yet, but let me explain how we approached this website project with a real agenda for change (as Gordon Brown might say).

Agile development was definitely a first for me - we embarked on a set of website features that evolved according to changing needs, iteration details that were teased out over time, and a continual focus on incremental improvements. There was much to accomplish in terms of how we approached our intended audience of software developers; we were committed to removing clutter, purging irrelevant content, and simplifying basic workflow throughout the site. Even Jakob Nielsen’s book on Prioritizing Web Usability was called upon to help us agree sensible (but not too utilitarian) usability standards for the site.

Like recovering web usability addicts, we met twice a week (religiously) and hammered out the key issues for each iteration. If we forgot something important, we just added it to the next available iteration (and dropped a lesser feature back in the delivery schedule). Disagreements flourished until the best argument won out and our plans became more decisive. We reminded ourselves repeatedly to avoid the trap of “bloated software” by focusing on the core functionality first and foremost – that guiding principle steered us back on course more than once. Some of the websites that we unashamedly drew inspiration from during this project included the following:

The result (I hope) is a much simplified website that’s built around the core principles of getting developers into our product more quickly and offering straightforward browse, try & buy options. We’ve removed a lot of the extraneous “corporate” information that developers resolutely ignore anyway, and concentrated on getting the message across in plain but opinionated terms. You can be the judge of whether we’ve succeeded in that goal - for my part, I’m convinced that striving for effortless simplicity is a lot of work and you may not succeed the first time around. But it’s certainly a lot of fun trying…