Project summary

• 4 complementary data sources informing discovery

• 250 high-traffic pages assessed

• ~60% of reviewed pages relevant across business divisions' target audiences

• 2 business divisions aligned around a unified information architecture

• 19% year-over-year reduction in on-page searches initiated from the Business taxes section

The challenge

Analysis of Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SOLR enterprise search data and call center reporting revealed that taxpayers were struggling to locate fundamental business tax information, including guidance about employer identification numbers and reporting requirements.

Relevant information was distributed across websites maintained by the Large Business & International division (LB&I) and the Small Business/Self-Employed division (SBSE).

These parallel content environments reflected the IRS's organizational structure rather than the information needs of taxpayers. Significant overlap in the topics relevant to the divisions' respective audiences contributed to competing and conflicting pages, broken navigation elements and confusing wayfinding.

I identified an opportunity to improve the digital experience by reorganizing business tax information around taxpayer needs while establishing a more sustainable approach to cross-divisional content management.

Project objectives

• Improve the findability of information about common business tax topics.

• Clarify which taxpayer audiences information serves.

• Simplify navigation and improve its scanability.

• Reduce the impact of internal organizational boundaries on the taxpayer experience.

• Establish agreement between divisions on content organization and ownership.

Discovery: Establishing a shared understanding of the problem

Although the behavioral data demonstrated information-seeking challenges, implementing meaningful changes would require cooperation from two divisions with distinct priorities and responsibilities.

I presented my findings to the communications liaisons for both divisions during standing stakeholder meetings and proposed a collaborative content assessment.

Both divisions were initially reluctant to participate in a consolidation initiative. Rather than asking them to commit to a major reorganization, I proposed a limited research exercise to determine the extent to which their existing content served overlapping audiences.

I also explained how incremental implementation, thorough documentation and post-launch behavioral analysis could help mitigate the risks of future changes.

Designing the content assessment

I developed a research methodology that combined quantitative usage data with subject-matter expertise.

1. Retrieved page-level data for the 300 most-used pages from each division's website.

2. Combined the inventories and ranked the pages according to page views over a one-year period.

3. Narrowed the combined inventory to the 250 highest-traffic pages.

4. Established audience categories reflecting the divisions' primary constituencies: large businesses, small businesses, self-employed taxpayers and gig workers.

5. Added topic categories informed by the initial research.

6. Facilitated a joint working session to explain the assessment methodology.

7. Asked each division to work with its subject matter experts to identify the audiences and topics relevant to each page.

8. Compared the completed assessments to identify areas of agreement across both divisions.

Approximately 60% of the reviewed pages were identified by both divisions as relevant to large businesses and at least one of the other business taxpayer audiences.

The findings provided a shared, evidence-based rationale for considering consolidation. Both divisions agreed to proceed with an initial reorganization initiative.

Strategy: Designing around taxpayer needs

I synthesized the content assessment, behavioral analytics, search queries and call center data to develop a proposed information architecture for a unified Business taxes section.

My approach prioritized three principles.

Shared information should be accessible through shared pathways. Taxpayers should not need to understand internal organizational boundaries to locate information relevant to their businesses.

Audience distinctions should be preserved where meaningful. Information specific to particular taxpayer groups should remain identifiable and accessible through targeted navigation.

Navigation should make information easier to scan and locate. Page hierarchy, labels, titles and wayfinding elements should work together to communicate where information resides and whom it serves.

The resulting proposal reorganized content from the two divisions into a unified information architecture with targeted areas for audience-specific information.

Stakeholder alignment and change management

I facilitated two rounds of stakeholder feedback and revisions to the proposed architecture.

Some recommendations exceeded what one or both divisions were comfortable implementing at that stage. Rather than allowing disagreements over individual recommendations to prevent broader progress, I separated immediately achievable improvements from longer-term opportunities.

Deferred recommendations included further content consolidation, additional changes to page wording and the potential removal of pages that functionally duplicated information available in formal tax publications.

I retained these recommendations, along with documentation of the concerns that prevented their implementation, to support future decision-making.

This approach allowed the initiative to move forward while preserving opportunities for continued modernization.

Governance: Clarifying responsibility for the digital experience

In addition to establishing a unified information architecture, I helped clarify responsibility for maintaining it.

Both divisions agreed that the central IRS.gov team would assume ownership of top-level navigation hubs, consistent with a broader enterprise governance direction.

The divisions retained ownership of their original subject-matter pages, preserving responsibility for accuracy within the teams with the appropriate expertise and program authority.

This model distinguished responsibility for the overall digital experience from responsibility for subject-matter content.

I also connected the ownership decisions to the organization's planned transition toward structured content and reusable content components, which would eventually provide additional flexibility in how information could be owned and maintained.

Implementation

Following stakeholder approval, I coordinated implementation with the publishing team.

The approved changes included:

• Reorganizing page locations and URL structures.

• Updating page titles and navigation terminology.

• Revising breadcrumbs to reflect the new information architecture.

• Establishing redirects for outdated URLs.

• Updating the sitemap.

• Simplifying section-wide navigation.

I maintained a change log documenting the updates and affected URLs, providing both divisions with a record of the completed work.

The scale of the initiative also exposed opportunities to improve publishing coordination. In collaboration with the publishing team, I helped streamline request processes and developed updated documentation to make future requests clearer and more efficient.

Reflection and future opportunities

The initiative reinforced that enterprise digital experience transformation requires more than identifying the optimal information architecture.

Successful implementation depends on understanding organizational priorities, establishing shared evidence, mitigating perceived risks and developing solutions that stakeholders are willing and able to sustain.

By beginning with a manageable discovery exercise, I was able to help two initially reluctant divisions recognize a shared problem and agree on meaningful improvements.

Future research could build on this work through direct taxpayer testing, examining whether users understand the intended audiences for particular content, can locate common business tax information and can complete high-priority tasks successfully.