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Tanja Jones Designs

Enhancing Customer Engagement:
A Comprehensive Website Redesign

The Problem:

The client specializes in delivering premium brand identities and graphic design solutions for small businesses and individuals. However, on the current website, users are unclear about what brand design covers and find it difficult to understand the services offered. The website is not user-friendly and fails to effectively showcase the client’s portfolio and design background. A new website is needed that incorporates the client’s new branding and improves usability by highlighting areas crucial for their target customers.

The Solution:

By conducting market and user research, which includes competitive benchmarking, user interviews, and usability testing, we’ll ensure that the new website meets the expectations of the client’s target audience. Moreover, it will effectively showcase the client’s previous work, providing users with a clear understanding of branding services.

My Role:

Two UX designers, including myself, collaborated on the project. My role involved co-designing the user experience and designing the website. We divided tasks evenly across each step and made decisions collaboratively. Subsequently, I took on the responsibility of refining the user interface for the final product.

The Process

Our approach followed five stages: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. However, as is often the case with digital design projects, the process was not linear, and iterations will be necessary to reach a final product.

Competitive Benchmarking:

We started the redesign process with competitive benchmarking to understand the branding design industry and identify areas for improvement on our website.

We reviewed competitors‘ websites to analyze their strengths and weaknesses and to identify industry best practices.

Our research revealed that successful businesses clearly explain what branding means on their websites. Additionally, we found that a prominent portfolio section is essential for showcasing past work and success stories.

Snippet of Competitive Benchmarking Document
Snippet of Competitive Benchmarking Document

Usability Tests and Depth Interviews:

To understand how users navigate a website for branding and graphic design services and what influences their decision to contact a business, we conducted:

  • 1-Hour Usability Sessions with Depth Interviews: Combined sessions to gather detailed user insights.
  • Insights Bank: Documenting users’ goals, behaviours, context, positive interactions, and pain points.

 

This process provided valuable information to improve website design and user engagement.

Affinity Diagram:

We have investigated the factors that determine how users navigate a website when seeking branding and graphic design services. Additionally, we examined the elements that influence their decision on whether to contact the business.

Key considerations for designing and structuring a website include:

  • Defining and explaining branding services
  • Showcasing previous work or portfolio
  • Providing transparent pricing information
  • Creating clear and compelling calls-to-action (CTAs)
  • Incorporating reviews and testimonials
  • Conveying an overall message and functionality of the website
  • Detailing services and packages
  • Optimizing the user interface (UI)
  • Designing a well-structured contact page
Snippet of the affinity diagram I created with another UX Designer

Customer Journey Map:

We outlined key steps in the customer journey and assessed each as positive, negative, or neutral using insights from the affinity diagram.

Pain Points:

  • Difficulty understanding the designer’s services.
  • Inability to distinguish between services and find relevant ones.
  • Lack of clarity on what’s included in the price.
  • Difficulty comparing package inclusions due to layout and functionality.
  • Excessive showcasing of previous work instead of highlighting the best.
  • Inadequate visibility of portfolio details, preventing users from understanding the designer’s contributions.

 

Positive Aspects:

  • Branding FAQ to help users understand service details.
  • Detailed page with an image of the person behind the business.
  • Usage of alternative wording rather than “testimonials.”

 

Neutral Aspects:

  • Users were generally satisfied with the structure of the home pages they visited.
Customer Journey Map

Flow Diagram and Website Structure:

We developed a flow diagram to outline the website structure, based on the most frequent user actions identified during usability testing.

Snippet of flow diagram

Interaction Design:

I drew up the screens for the desktop booking process based on insights from the previous steps. When crafting these screens, I considered the following aspects:

  • Service Presentation: Providing detailed explanations for all services, especially branding.
  • Branding Explanation Page: Including a page that outlines the elements of the branding service and includes relevant FAQs.
  • Service Comparison: Presenting services in a way that facilitates easy comparison and highlights key differences.
  • Portfolio: Ensuring images are accompanied by pertinent descriptions to clearly showcase the designer’s work.
  • About Page: Featuring a visually appealing image that reflects the designer’s style and introduces users to the person behind the business.
  • Contact Page: Creating a comprehensive contact page with detailed contact information and a user-friendly fill-in form.
Sketches of Interaction Design

Website Design Using Elementor Pro:

Based on the tasks completed in the earlier phases of this project, I proceeded to create the website pages in WordPress, utilizing the features of Elementor Pro.

Since it’s a visual builder, we concluded that no previous wireframing in Figma is needed. Before the launch, the design can be iteratively modified to match all requirements.

Conclusion

Working on this project was an exciting and collaborative experience. Partnering with another UX designer, we successfully navigated each phase, from research and planning to design and implementation. Our efforts culminated in a final product that aligned with the client’s goals and addressed the identified user pain points.

Unfortunately, the effects of the website redesign couldn’t be measured, as the business owner ceased their activities shortly after the new website was launched. Despite this, the project provided valuable insights into user-centered design practices and reinforced the importance of thorough research and iterative testing in creating an effective digital presence.

This project highlights the value of UX design in enhancing customer engagement and the importance of a well-structured, user-friendly website in showcasing a business’s offerings.