Redesigning Laura MacNeil Consultancy's Website
Leveraging improved information architecture to funnel SME’s, incentivize influencers, and align corporations with well-matched social causes.
Laura Macneil.com
Role
UX Designer
Timeline
Tools
4 Weeks
Figma, Mural
The Problem
Laura is seeking to establish a niche among other digital adoption advisors registered with CDAP.
Design Challenge
How Might We design Laura’s website to refine her niche as a digital adoption advisor
The Solution
Our team of designers has created a website that incorporates Laura’s newly acquired CDAP accreditation and highlights her strategic storytelling component, effectively funneling SME’s into a nonprofit’s cause, incentivize influencers, and align corporations with well-matched social causes and coveted audiences.
Project Plan
Researching her audience
Analyzing her competition
Conducting a site audit on her website
Testing her website
Refining her sitemap
Sketching wireframes
Redesigning information architecture
Following our introductory meeting, we presented a UX/UI Design Project Plan to Laura that incorporated the following UX concepts:
Researching Audience
Knowing that Laura’s clientele differed dramatically in the past, we created personas to help guide our designs based on her previous clientele.
Our research into the CDAP program revealed recipients for the grant are required to earn at least $500K in annual revenue. This helped us narrow our approach towards our user personas and identifying the target market for our designs.
Competitor Analysis
Laura gave the team the names of four competitors, giving us the liberty to conduct a heuristic examination of their websites.
The results of our analysis guided the future design choices for Laura MacNeil Consultancy, offering recommendations for making the website distinct from its competitors and remedying any recognized weaknesses.
Results of the competitive analysis included the following suggestions:
Website Audit
Our website audit revealed usability issues on Laura’s site, encouraging us to follow our audit with remote usability testing of the website.
The audit covered topics including Conversion Rate Optimization, Accessibility, and Design/UX.
User Testing and Misdirection
Although conducting usability tests informed us of additional critical fixes necessary to the usability of Laura’s website, we realized we were working outside of the scope of the project by focusing on UX rather than incorporating Laura’s CDAP accreditation.
Participants encountered confusion around the website’s interaction design, visual design, and hierarchy issues consistent with our site audit findings. As UX designers, our team struggled to separate ourselves from these issues and focus on the project: To incorporate the CDAP offering to Laura’s website.
Proposing Wireframes
We presented our wireframes to Laura, justifying our design decisions by referring to usability encountered during the website audit and usability tests.
Final Screens
Our final screens showcased some minor adjustments at the direction of Laura, matching our screens to her current site’s fonts, color themes, and imagery.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, the redesign of Laura MacNeil Consultancy's website was a challenging but rewarding project that required thorough research and analysis to achieve its goals.
What Worked
• We believe that the new website will provide a better user experience for Laura's clients and help her stand out in the crowded marketplace of digital transformations for small businesses. Our team was proud to have contributed to the success of this project.
Challenges
• Because several of our UX modifications required for the long-term success of Laura's website fell outside the scope of the project, which should have been centered on Laura's CDAP accreditation, not all of our screens suggested were implemented into Laura’s current website.
What I’d Do Differently Next Time
• Making a habit of connecting our work to the big picture throughout the week is crucial to the payout of our effort over time.
• Using our recurring 1:1 with our stakeholder to better understand the team’s direction could stimulate new ideas and propose interesting design considerations on a future client project of this nature.