Responsive Site Redesign

Background

Bodybuilding.com is one of the world’s most trafficked health and fitness websites, with over 1 million daily visitors. Aside from its commercial responsibilities, Bodybuilding.com publishes daily editorial content, training plans, and streams live broadcasts of major fitness events. Bodybuilding.com also operates its own fitness-themed social network, BodySpace, with over 2.7 million active members, along with one of the Internet's most-trafficked forums, with over 7 million members contributing well over 100 million posts to date.

At the start of this project, I was tasked with creating a more modern wrapper UI that was flexible enough to accomodate all of Bodybuilding.com’s existing web assets, while supporting ongoing content creation and iteration. After evaluating the site to identify opportunities for improvement, I realized that the priority should shift to the site taxonomy, which was severely limiting user experience and concealing a lot of useful content. As a result, my design efforts started with cataloging and rebucketing hundreds of pages into four primary categories: Store, Articles, Training, and Community.

After the new taxonomy was established, I set about an iterative process that included design and testing of wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. In addition to user testing, these artifacts were utilized to gather input and buy-in from stakeholders over the course of the project. Throughout the process, I worked closely with teams throughout the company to gather requirements and develop a roll-out plan. As a result of these collaborative efforts, a fully functional redesign was launched sitewide on day one, with only minimal downtime.