Client: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

Challenge: The client had a microsite that they wanted to migrate to their main site to keep traffic on the main site, connect users to more robust content, and help. In addition to the UX perspective, the client also acknowledged that the microsite was no longer managed, so by migrating to the main site the web team could easily make web updates.

Solution and Approach:

1. Content audit

2. Internal presentation of content migration strategy (with team)

3. External presentation of content migration strategy (with client)

4. Client approval of strategy

5. Copy editing (first an internal initial edit and suggestions, then working with SAMHSA SMEs to finalize copy edits)

6. Stage new content from MentalHealth.gov on a VM

7. Move staged content to prod as drafts

8. Update content based on SME review

9. SEO optimization for titles and suggestions

10. Work alongside COR to create Spanish pages of the final copy

11. Create Spanish toggle pages

12. Work alongside devs to create URL redirects

13. QC all content links

14. Go live

Timeframe: Project kickoff on May 4, 2022. The content went live at the end of April 2023 (just in time for Mental Health Month in May).

Technology Used: Drupal CMS, Mural, Excel, Jira

Key Outcomes and Metrics: The client was incredibly satisfied with the process and outcome, migrating the entire site (90 pages, including Spanish). Analytics has also been measured since the migration and is constantly growing. The number of page views to the mentalhealth.gov landing page has nearly doubled to the newly migrated landing page (samhsa.gov/mental-health) - It was averaging around 33k page views a month before migration, and in January 2024 was 62k page views. And several other topic-based pages have increased greatly. For example, Bipolar disorder averaged 1k PVs a month before migration and in Jan 2024 was almost 20k PVs and Schizophrenia averaged less than 1k PV a month and is in Jan 2024 was 19k PVs.