ISBA Announces Launch of Redesigned Website

The ISBA is excited to announce the launch of our redesigned website.

The redesigned website was built to improve the user experience by featuring a more streamlined homepage and a simplified navigation structure.

To make the website more user-friendly, the navigation bar at the top of the homepage was redesigned to be more intuitive. Each of the main menu items will take the user to a landing page, and each menu item also has headings to better organize the sub-menu items within it. These groupings were designed to help members more easily access the ISBA’s suite of resources.

Our New Menu Items

Website redesigns can be confusing. To help ISBA members navigate the new site, here’s a breakdown of the newly restructured menu items:

• News & Publications: Illinois Lawyer Now, E-Clips, the Illinois Bar Journal, ISBA Books, information about advertising with us, and more.
• CLE & Events: Upcoming and on-demand CLE programs, Free On-Demand CLE, Frequently Asked Questions, information about members’ CLE accounts, upcoming ISBA events (including Annual and Midyear Meetings), and the statewide bar calendar.
• Practice & Career: Practice HQ, legal forms, Fastcase, and ways to promote your practice and career.
• Groups & Participation: Section information, information for new lawyers, and ISBA Central.
• Membership & Benefits: Joining and renewing ISBA membership, additional member benefits.

Redesign Background

Prior to the launch, the ISBA hired a usability consultant, Sage Research and Design, to evaluate the website and provide a series of recommendations. Sage conducted a survey of ISBA members and determined that the two areas that needed the most changes were the homepage design and navigation.

The top three recommendations for the homepage included streamlining content, creating a structure that helps members find the most important information quickly, and using more white space and a clean design to lighten up the pages.

The recommendation for the navigation was to reduce the number of menu items at the top of the page and to group sub-menu items under different headings. To determine how to reorganize navigation, the usability consultant conducted multiple rounds of testing for two types of user studies.

The first study had members put our menu items into groups and name those groups. The result showed what organization and grouping of information were consistently agreed upon across users. A second study was used to test and refine the newly organized menu by having members perform a series of tasks (e.g., renew, find free CLE, etc.) and measured how directly and quickly people could find the appropriate page and how easy they thought the task was.

We hope that the new redesign will help you to more easily and readily engage with us. Please let us know your thoughts about the redesign by filling out a brief survey about the website.