Everybody tends to have an opinion when it comes to changing the look-and-feel of websites. Consequently, getting agreement internally can be a challenging task. Thus far most organizations have spent their time on heated discussions about colors, layout styles, navigation options and then finally settled on just about tolerable compromises. Is there no better alternative to this cumbersome approach? How do you avoid that your redesign ruins the user experience?

At Fannie Mae, the largest mortgage finance company in America, they decided to use customer satisfaction data to guide their redesign. This enabled them to make a compelling business case for the design changes and quantify homeowner expectations about what those changes should achieve. Using this data, Fannie Mae was able to achieve the maximum impact by identifying and prioritizing opportunities for improvement.

On the user experience track in Philadelphia you can learn from Jonathan Sullivan, the Director of Web Services at Fannie Mae. He will share his experiences on how they managed a data-driven redesign, while the mortgage crisis was in full swing. In the session, Jonathan is followed by UX and analytics expert Marko Hurst, with a talk on User Experience By the Numbers.

Did you manage to avoid endless discussions when you last redesigned your website?