Transforming SGX’s Navigation: From Buried Content to Strategic Findability

SGX – Singapore Exchange is one of Asia’s leading multi-asset exchanges. The SGX public website serves diverse audiences like investors, listed companies, market data consumers, and media with thousands of pages spanning market data, regulatory filings, and educational resources.

Role
Senior UX Designer

Duration
4.5 months

Responsibilities
Research, UX UI Designs, handoff to dev, QC

Impact

• 35% increase in menu-driven traffic
• 40% reduction in search dependency (from 65% to 25%)
• 88% reduction in support tickets (from 70+ to 8-10/month)
• 70% task success rate in prototype testing, validated with 78% post-launch

When Navigation Becomes a Barrier

After 8 years without meaningful evolution, SGX’s navigation system wasn’t just outdated, it was actively failing users and hurting the business. What started as a simple dropdown menu had evolved into a maze of poorly organized categories, duplicate menu items, and buried content.

The user experience was breaking down

• Menu usage dropped 27% while search usage surged to 74% of all navigation attempt
• Support teams fielded 70+ tickets per month from confused users unable to locate basic information

• 35+ internal users across 7 departments maintained personal spreadsheets of bookmarked URLs because the official navigation couldn’t be trusted

Business impact was significant

M&C – Marketing & Communications needed space for visual ads and new categories, but the dropdown architecture couldn’t accommodate growth. Competitively, SGX looked dated while exchanges like NAsdaq, Hong Kong Exchange and London Stock Exchange had modernized with intuitive mega menus.

The root cause: Taxonomy chaos

The information architecture had evolved reactively over 8 years without governance:

• Menu items appeared in multiple categories
• Labels reflected internal org structure, not user language
• No consistent organizing principle (mixing task-based, audience-based, and content-type categories)
• New content buried deep while legacy options dominated prime space

What Success Would Look Like

Redesign the navigation to accommodate business growth and visual advertising while improving findability through intuitive IA restructuring. Create a scalable system that could evolve with SGX’s needs, maintain design system standards, and launch before the group rebranding in 4.5 months.

Success Metrics
Reduce search dependency, increase menu-driven traffic, improve user satisfaction, and eliminate support ticket volume.

Listening to Users, Reading the Data

I designed a mixed-methods research approach to understand not just what was failing, but why users were struggling and what mental models they brought to the platform.

Research Approach:

Primary Research

• Competitive Analysis: Nasdaq, HK Exchange, London Stock Exchange & Luxembourg stock Exchange mega menu patterns
• User Survey: 35 respondents across 7 internal departments
• User Interviews: 6 strategically selected users representing different roles and experience levels

Secondary Research

• Analytics Deep-Dive: Google Analytics data showing 27% traffic decline and 74% search dependency
• Support Ticket Analysis: 70+ tickets catalogued by M&C team revealing specific findability failures

Why internal users first? Internal teams were the heaviest platform users – if they couldn’t navigate efficiently, external users certainly couldn’t. Budget constraints limited external recruitment, but we planned careful post-launch monitoring to catch any external user issues.

What the Research Revealed

Three critical insights shaped the entire design direction:

1. Taxonomy Was the Core Problem

Users weren’t struggling with visual design – they struggled because the IA didn’t match how they thought about content. The structure reflected organizational silos rather than user mental models, creating duplicate items, inconsistent categorization, and confusing labels.

“Menu is constraining options since new ones are buried while old ones [are] not heavily visited.”

2. Cognitive Load Created Search Dependency

The dropdown architecture forced users to build mental maps of where content might be across multiple hidden categories. They had to guess, click through dropdowns, and repeat if wrong.

“I spend time jumping from one option to another and opening drop-down menus when it could all be seen in a single glance.”

This explained the 74% search usage, users weren’t preferring search, they were giving up on navigation entirely.

3. The System Couldn’t Scale

With 10 categories already causing confusion, business growth plans would only worsen the problem. M&C needed visual ad space and new categories, but the dropdown couldn’t accommodate expansion without increasing cognitive load.

Turning Insights Into Direction

These findings led to three design principles that guided every decision:

1. Easy Findability: Restructure IA around user mental models, not internal org structure
2. Scanability: Show full navigation at a glance – no hidden options, no guessing
3. Visual Balance: Use iconography strategically to create hierarchy without overwhelming

Rebuilding the Foundation Together

I brought a human-centered taxonomy approach using mental models, while M&C brought deep institutional knowledge about content strategy and business context. This partnership was critical – neither perspective alone would have created an optimal solution.

Key restructuring decisions:

• Consolidated from 10 categories to 8 through better organization, not just reduction
• Eliminated nested dropdowns in favor of flat mega menu showing all options simultaneously
• Removed duplicate menu items by establishing clear category ownership
• Rewrote labels using user-facing language instead of internal terminology
• Applied consistent organizing logic based on user mental models

I used mental model mapping to understand how users naturally categorized financial information, then aligned the IA to match those expectations.

Testing, Learning, Refining

We conducted three rounds of prototype testing with 30 internal users across 7 departments:

Round 1 Findings:

• Menu felt too wordy and text-heavy
• Mobile view difficult to navigate
• Some categories still confusing

Round 2 Changes:

• Added icons to primary categories for visual differentiation
• Introduced visual ad thumbnails for balanced layout
• Refined confusing category labels

View in Figma

Round 3 Validation:

• Retitled categories to align with business terminology
• Confirmed final IA structure
• Re-position Ad to left while prioritizing menu options
• Added platform access and partner-companies in secondary header 
• 85% task success rate across test scenarios

View in Figma

A Transparent Look at Our Constraints

Testing only internal users was a risk. While post-launch metrics validated the design worked for external users (30% traffic increase), earlier external validation would have de-risked the launch. Budget and timeline were real constraints, but we mitigated through careful post-launch monitoring.

When Business Needs Meet User Needs

The Mid-Project Curveball

With the IA validated, M&C introduced a new requirement: visual advertising space for promoting featured content and initiatives. This was a strategic business requirement tied to the SGX rebranding, not a “nice to have.”

Initially, this felt like a constraint that would compromise user experience. But as I explored solutions, I realized it could strengthen the design if handled thoughtfully.

Finding the Right Balance

M&C initially proposed placing ads at the bottom of the mega menu. I saw problems with this approach and advocated for right-side placement instead.

M&C understood the strategic thinking and approved the direction. This demonstrated balancing user experience with business goals rather than just accommodating requirements.

My rationale for right-side placement:

• User priority preserved: Left-to-right scanning keeps menu options as primary focus
• Future-proof: Menu can expand vertically without affecting ads
• Visual attention earned: Thumbnail imagery naturally draws the eye – doesn’t need prime left position
• Responsive friendly: Easy to remove ads on mobile without disrupting menu
• Scalable: Vertical space allows for future scrollable promotional content

M&C understood the strategic thinking and approved the direction. This demonstrated balancing user experience with business goals rather than just accommodating requirements.

Why hide ads on mobile? Traffic data showed desktop dominance. On mobile, screen space is precious and navigation clarity takes absolute priority over promotional content.

The Numbers Tell the Story

I tracked metrics carefully for one month post-launch to validate whether we’d solved the problems.

Business Impact

• Previously buried pages became discoverable
• Visual ad space enabled M&C to promote new content
• Heatmap data showed user attention in ad placement area
• 35+ internal users freed from navigation workarounds
• M&C empowered to manage IA adjustments independently through CMS
• Successfully launched before rebranding deadline
• Modernized SGX’s digital presence to compete with global exchanges

What This Project Taught Me

If I could redo this project:

1. Push harder for external user research
Make a stronger case for budget to include investors, listed companies, and public users in testing. Power users have different mental models than occasional visitors.

2. Establish longer-term monitoring
Build a 3-6 month monitoring plan into project scope. User behavior evolves, and some issues only emerge over time. Demonstrates ongoing ownership of outcomes.

3. Define ad performance metrics upfront
Work with M&C to establish success metrics for the visual ad component—click-through rates, engagement time, conversion metrics.

4. Taxonomy is strategic work
Information architecture impacts user behavior, business outcomes, and organizational efficiency. I now approach IA with the same rigor as visual design.

5. Constraints can improve design
The mid-project ad requirement forced a more flexible, scalable solution. Embrace constraints as creative prompts, not obstacles.

6. Collaborative taxonomy works
Partnership between my user-centered perspective and M&C’s business context created better outcomes than either approach alone. Cross-functional collaboration is about co-creation, not just collecting feedback.

7. Measurement proves impact
Without clear metrics (30% traffic increase, 49% search reduction, 88% ticket reduction), this would be another “we redesigned the menu” story. Senior designers must establish measurement frameworks upfront.

8. Research has limits
Being explicit about research limitations helps stakeholders make informed decisions about risk. Honesty about constraints builds trust.

Final Thoughts

Looking back on this project, three core UX principles shaped everything we built, and continue to influence how I approach design work today:

3 Core Principles

Information architecture is strategy, not structure
I came into this project thinking we’d redesign a menu. What I learned was that no amount of visual polish could fix a broken taxonomy. The 74% search dependency wasn’t a design problem. it was a foundational IA problem. Rebuilding the structure around user mental models rather than internal org charts made everything else possible. This taught me to always start with the foundation, not the facade.

Research prevents assumptions, iteration prevents mistakes.
Testing with 30 users across three rounds felt time-consuming in a 4.5-month timeline, but it saved us from shipping something that looked good but didn’t work. Each round revealed insights I couldn’t have predicted – from the need for icons to create visual anchors, to category labels that needed business context I didn’t have. The collaborative approach with M&C reinforced that the best solutions come from multiple perspectives, not lone genius.

Impact requires measurement
Early in my career, I would have called this project done after launch. Now I understand that the real work is proving it succeeded. The 30% traffic increase and 88% support ticket reduction transformed this from “we redesigned the menu” into “we solved a business problem.” Establishing metrics upfront and tracking them post-launch has become non-negotiable for me. Design without measurement is just decoration.

This project reminded me why I chose UX design, the opportunity to solve real problems for real people while delivering measurable business value. The mega menu now serves thousands of daily users better than before, and that impact makes all the complexity worthwhile.

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