Building a step-by-step guide for tax filers

Filing taxes can be overwhelming. To ease that stress, I led information architecture work to develop a central guide that linked 20 key pages on IRS.gov, walking taxpayers through the filing process with clear, step-by-step guidance.

The redesigned pages had more than 103.7 million views within the first month, accounting for 28% of IRS.gov traffic. Six new pages entered the top 500 most viewed, with additional positive metrics showing reduced internal searches and improved external search rankings.

The 9-month project won a 2024 Service to the Citizen award, honoring excellence in digital services enhancing the lives of Americans.

Challenge

Business problem: The IRS website provided numerous instructions on filing taxes, but lacked a central hub with plain language content to guide new or infrequent filers through the process. Content was scattered across the site in news releases, web pages, tax forms and instructions, many of which were only available as PDFs. This created issues updating content to reflect the latest tax changes and filing deadlines.

User problem: Filers needed an easy-to-find guide that walked them through the steps required to file their taxes. Ideally, the guide would have easy ways to navigate across the various steps.

Strategic challenge:

• Consolidating content from across pages and business units to be more relevant to users
• Finding a way to link step-by-step content despite CMS limitations
• Making the new content developed for the guide appear atop organic and site search results

Approach

I led information architecture for the project, which included determining the best pace for it to live on the IRS.gov website, optimizing the content for search and finding cross-linking opportunities.

• Managing and reviewing analytics and SEO (Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Looker Studio, Tableau, Excel)
• Incorporating IA into user testing (Figjam, Optimal Workshop)
• Creating wireframes and user flows for testing and presentation (Adobe XD, Figma)
• Creating and delivering presentations and reports (PowerPoint, Word, Teams)
• Creating and managing a central knowledge management and research repository (Confluence, SharePoint, Teams)

Research

• Conducted content inventory with traffic and engagement metrics
• Analyzed user search paths using Google Analytics and Google Search Console
• Participated in one-on-one user testing with first-time filers to understand and document pain points

Information architecture

• Developed navigation based on user journeys for first-time filers
• Tested navigation in one-on-one user testing and iterated based on findings
• Iterated navigation and labels based on stakeholder feedback while maintaining user-centered design principles

Implementation & Optimization

• Coordinated with project leads, subject matter experts, content writers, and publishers to have navigation, labels and crosslinks ready at launch with all needed translations.
• Implemented redirects and updated internal linking structure
• Conducted ongoing analytics reviews to iterate navigation based on user behavior

Outcome

UX improvements

• Reduced cognitive load for filers going through an often-complicated process
• Improved findability by locating the pages within the Filing>Individuals navigation of the website
• Became a template for journey-based content and navigation

Business outcomes

• Six new pages entered the top 500 most viewed, with additional positive metrics showing reduced internal searches and improved external search rankings.
• User engagement with the interlinked series was high, indicating effective navigation through related tasks.
• Improved IRS reputation for customer service, winning multiple awards, including the 2024 Service to the Citizen Award.

Lessons learned

Stakeholder education as UX strategy: This project’s success hinged on helping non-IA team members understand user-centered navigation and design principles. Teaching stakeholders to see through users’ eyes became as crucial as the design work itself.

Measurement in government context: Beyond traditional UX metrics, we had to demonstrate value in terms of operational efficiency, citizen satisfaction, and public trust—metrics that translated across different government priorities.

Scalable methodology: The user journey approach we developed for this project can be applied to other content areas.

Next steps

I hope that future user testing and analytics research will be conducted to determine how users are navigating these steps. Future user testing should address:

• Do users want the step-by-step navigation at the top of the page?
• How is the series navigation working for those on mobile devices?
• How is the series working for users who come into the pages via search?
• What other options could we provide for taxpayers who need extra guidance vs. taxpayers just trying to complete a specific task?

Users expect the links in the table of contents to behave consistently. I wonder if mixing external and in-page links in the list breaks users’ mental models and causes confusion. The style and format of the table of contents should be consistent across the website to match users’ expectations.

Conducting A/B testing could help us iterate to determine if offering on-page quick links and brief explainer text at the top of the step pages would improve user experience, particularly on mobile devices.