Continuous Improvements to Fingate

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Since the redesigned Fingate site launched in summer 2020, FMS has been continuously working to optimize the site to meet our users' needs. The site, which garners over 20,000 pageviews each month, supports the Stanford community in quickly locating and understanding policies, processes and the needed information to perform financial activities efficiently, accurately and within compliance. While the redesign did include a focus on providing a more modern look and feel to our users, the primary goals were, and continue to be, ensuring that users can search and navigate through the site efficiently and effectively. In addition, content is being updated on a frequent basis, refined and improved to better meet your needs. As a continuation of those goals, FMS has recently implemented some changes to Fingate search functionality that will improve the user experience. These changes are a result of a deep dive study of the site analytics, user experience polls and direct feedback from the site's audience.

Fingate Search Engine Improvements

Enhancement	Sample Screenshot
Continually improving several Fingate search engine configurations such as resolving an issue when spaces were used in search queries for terms in the site that use hyphens such as year-end, month-end, non-po and so on. An internal FMS team assisted in conducting multiple rounds of testing that helped the developers in fine-tuning the search configurations to produce accurate results. Just in time for year-end close.	Click to enlarge screenshot

Next steps

If you ever have any questions or suggestions, feel free to send your feedback to @email.

Improved Navigation and Layout Changes

Completed Enhancements

Enhancement	Sample Screenshot
Addition of mega menu to content pages: The mega menu is now available on almost all pages except for a few sub-sections of the site. Addition of active state indicator in main menu to help user track site navigation. Improvements to breadcrumb navigation now include the full path through the site. Updates to page layout were implemented, including the header of page moved down below the breadcrumb navigation, matched with corresponding icon/color treatment. With the addition of the mega menu to most pages, the related content box to the right has been replaced with related news.	Enlarge screenshot Click to enlarge screenshot
How To and Reporting pages have been updated to display any associated content to the right hand of the page content, rather than at the top.	Enlarge screenshot Click to enlarge screenshot

Site Speed, Reduced Pop Ups and Search Improvements

Completed Enhancements

Goal	Action Plan
Improve search capability	(Completed on March 2, 2022) The Fingate team updated the configurations of the Fingate search engine to index keywords from all sections of the site. Previously the search was limited to scan specific sections of a page. Search queries now produce more relevant matches that are provided within the search results by relevance. This is a significant improvement that has fixed the issue of certain keywords that produced zero results. Thanks to continued feedback from website users, ongoing improvements to the search engine continue through analyzing the search metrics and fine tuning the search configurations. Users can share examples of search queries that did not produce relevant results to inform future updates by filling out this feedback form.
Reduce pop-ups and "density" of the site	(Completed - February 2022) Feedback from users indicated a desire for minimal interruptions to the experience. Notably, the pop-up tours through the site were not adding value for many users and were, instead, detracting from the experience. As a result, the pop-up tours have been disabled.
Improve site speed and responsiveness	(Completed - January 2022) The Fingate team constantly monitors site speed and discovered some opportunities to reduce loading time for scripts running during each user session. With some code refinements and bug fixes, site speed has been significantly improved, especially when navigating through the homepage.

Improved Search Functionality

The changes to search functionality include:

Re-configured the search engine: Now, the search engine will display all the results associated with any part of a phrase you entered into in the search query. This has significantly improved the number of relevant results generated by the search engine, especially when a user types in a search phrase that doesn't match exactly to a phrase in the site.
Added suggested search terms functionality: As you are typing the first letters of their search query, a list of suggested search terms based on available results will automatically display for you to select from. This is a common functionality in other search engines to assist the user with targeting their search request.

Enhancements launched on August 12

The second round of search enhancements included more improvements focused on usability and to provide a more holistic search experience:

Quicker search entry: In the full-screen search modal, which is activated by clicking on the “Search” button in the top right corner of the site, the cursor is now immediately active in the search text field and users can type their search query without having to either tab multiple times or move their mouse cursor to the text field. This change greatly enhances the accessibility and usability of the search.
Consolidated search: Also in the full-screen search modal, the radio buttons to limit your search to just the site or the newsroom have been removed. The search engine will now display results containing items such as announcements and newsletters. This change is a result of feedback that users did not know which radio button to choose, or, in some cases, had not been aware that there was a differentiation in the content type they were searching for.
New search filter: To support the consolidated search, we have added a new filter in the search results pages, to narrow or widen results by news content type in the left hand sidebar.