[EPIC] Campaign Landing Page: Editor-facing enhancements

[kevwalsh]

Status

[2025-02-15] [Michelle M] non-engineering iterations identified and ticketed - just not prioritized due to UX staffing constraints
[2025-01-15] [Fran] This issue updated with results of the Spike (audit) conducted by Dave Picket. Tickets will be created and prioritized as non-engineering updates.

Description

• This issue was updated in September 2024 by Michelle following a few editor conversations and a series of problematic launches
  • the inflexibility of the template has led to underutilization
  • a few highly visible CLPs have recently been delayed at the time of launch because of bugs, unexpected behavior, and/or confusion editorial UX

Overview

Initiative brief: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team/blob/master/products/campaign-landing-page/initiatives/2024-v2-clp-enhancements/initiative-brief.md

The Campaign Landing Page MVP was launched in 2021, and a review needs to be conducted to determine whether the MVP was successful, and if not not, what next steps if any should be prioritized.

Outcome Summary

The opportunity is to validate or disprove effectiveness of the MVP Campaign Landing Page, which will provide insight into possible improvements or enhancements in order to provide the best possible experience for both our Veterans (their caregivers and other users), as well as Content Editors the best experience possible.

Related/Associated product(s)

• Campaign landing page template - product outline

Problem

The CLP template does not meet all the original KPIs - especially:

• the capabilities of the CLP template (the various content components) meet the minimum needs of the business stakeholders
• the CMS functionality of the template builder is bug-free and user/author-friendly

Evidence

• the template is underutilized - 21 CLPs have been created since 9/2021
  • 4 are still in draft, having never been published
  • 5 have been archived
• expressed editor frustration about the inflexibility of the template
• some CLPs have been created but did not meet stakeholder requirements and were never published
• a few highly visible CLPs have recently been delayed at the time of launch because of bugs, unexpected behavior, and/or confusion editorial UX

Product documentation

• Existing product docs: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team/blob/master/products/campaign-landing-page

Resources to inform iteration

• Use of optional segments across 11 recent CLPs
• Stakeholder feedback
• Analytics

Questions

• how much flexibility can be introduced with minimal engineering, i.e.
  • increasing character counts
  • relaxing required segments
  • allowing reordering of segments (especially Why this matters and What you can do)
  • removing requirement for first CTA and/or allowing for more than one in Hero banner and/or top segments
  • allowing optional segment to be repeated

Historical notes

• It was noted that the product guide PDF needs to be migrated into KB article -> but likely it will need to be updated when enhancements are made anyway

Audit Results

Quick/non-engineering wins

Hero banner panel #20291

• Expand the intro character count limitation from 100 to 160 characters
  • Rationale: Adding 50 characters gives CLP editors the few extra characters they expressed would be helpful while being low enough to be used as the meta description in search results without being truncated. Pending federal standards for meta page description recommend character counts between 50 and 160.
• Change the primary CTA from required to optional. However, if the editor chooses to add a primary CTA, both the link and link text are required
• Rationale: Editors indicated that sometimes more context/content is needed before a call to action is appropriate

Why this matters #20294

• Expand the intro character count from 350 to 450
  • Rationale: CLP editors are prompted to use this section for the most impactful information yet editors reported the existing character limitation prevented them from adding context which is sometimes needed.
• Expand the audience cardinality from 3 to 5 audiences
  • Rationale: allowing the selection of 5 audiences gives more flexibility without severely impacting the front end design

Connect with us #20298

• If Dave can, the "Connect with us" block should have "Veterans Affairs" as an option, rather than VACO.
  • we should test to see what renders on the front end

Change management

• Separately, we'll want to update the KB articles with more examples, scenarios, and tips. We can use best practices to reinforce how the template should be used, even if the template doesn't enforce compliance
• announcements to editors about changes

For the future

• Revisit Why this matters and What you can do sections
  • I don't think we can remove the requirement on these sections without FE work to ensure the headings do not render unless the content fields are populated.
• Align the audience list with the audience taxonomy for consistency (one finalized following R&S research)
• We'll need Design to evaluate the impact of changes to the number of promo boxes and/or the absence of link teasers
• Engineering will be needed to enable previewing, make navigational flow improvements or adjust nesting forms