Project Overview

Elizabeth Brett offers spiritual guidance through Sacred Ceremonies for women.  She is excited to create some new offerings to start this Fall but hasn’t been able to get very many women to sign up for her offerings lately.  She’s been focused on Instagram mostly but would like to boost her email list and improve her website to attract more users.

Problems

When I first met with Elizabeth, she had a lot of goals!  After meeting with her to discuss how to narrow the scope of this project, she landed on these as her top three goals: 

1. Increase the number of signups by improving the flow and structure of her Offerings pages.
2. Increase her email subscribers, so she will have more people to join her new offerings.
3. Set up Google Analytics, to make later improvements.

For this project, I focused almost entirely on the first goal.

How can we increase the number of women signing up for her offerings?

Hypothesis

I have the belief that there is a high bounce rate from her site because users can't find the information they're looking for quickly, causing them to get confused, and they don't want to contact Elizabeth and wait for a response to their questions.  It's also my belief that if we improve navigation and include more details about her offerings, more women will sign up.

Design Research

Site Map

As a systems thinker, it was important for me to start by getting a broad overview of the system (website), so I first looked at the current structure of the site to create a Site Map.  This helped me to get a blueprint for what pages the users would be visiting, and what content was available on each page, as well as any inconsistencies.

Through this simple Site Map, I learned quite a bit.  In regards to my main goals, I learned:

• The page for the Sacred Ceremonies is just the August waitlist sign-up.
• The expandable menu on the Offerings page is a “dead end,” and doesn’t lead to more information, so you have to keep scrolling to learn more.
• Since signups for freebies add to her email list, I noticed that one freebie (playlist) has a form right on the homepage, whereas the other (Sacred Mother Guide) has its own page.
• The only true newsletter signup I found was through the Instagram linktr.ee, or a box to check in forms on the 1:1 Sacred Rebirth & Rite of Passage pages.

User Flows

I also wanted to understand what the current flow was for a user to sign up for an Offering.  I chose the Sacred Ceremonies offering since that is the beginner-friendly one, and the one users will usually sign up for first.  Here's what I found:

​This showed me visually how complex the process was for them to get their questions answered before they were willing to sign up for the Sacred Ceremonies offering.

Some users went searching for more information:

• Through the FAQs
• Through the “Book a 1:1 Session” button
• On the Contact page, in order to email her directly

Usability Testing

User Personas

Before I could select users for some user testing, I needed to learn what type of user is most attracted to Elizabeth’s offerings, so I talked to the client about who typically attends her ceremonies (and I attended one myself!) and created these:

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User Survey

I wanted to quickly get some quantitative data on where users would go to find certain things, and whether their expectations were met with the current site, so I sent this survey out while waiting to schedule User Interviews.  I ended up with six responses.

User Interviews

To better put myself in the user’s shoes and see first-hand how they interacted with her site, I then conducted three user interviews.  I wanted to see where they went to find information, and what types of information they were looking for.

Research Results

Journey Map

I was eager to see a big picture of the user journey, based on the data from my survey and interviews.  To do this, I chose to create a journey map.  I first used some sticky notes to try and define the stages that a user might take through their journey through her website.  I wrote down all the user touchpoints I could think of, then grouped them into different stages that I could use in my map.

​(Click on image to view a PDF of the Journey Map)

Key Pain Points

• What’s the difference between the 1:1 offerings?
• What are the details (location, length, cost, what’s included)?
• Deterred by having to wait for an email response.
• Anxious having to wait to put it on my busy calendar.
• How to get on the email list for blog posts and events.

Key Opportunities

• Differentiate the 1:1 offerings in the expandable menu.
• Create a new page for Sacred Ceremonies with all the details.
• Create consistent pages for each offering with all details
• Provide a comforting confirmation message with transparency on what to expect.
• Email captures in Header, Footer, and after blog posts.

Designing Solutions

From here, I was able to start prioritizing the most pressing problems.  I started my design process by putting all the feedback from my user interviews and surveys together and creating a “How, Now, Wow!” visual to help prioritize ideas.  I then focused on the “Wow!” items for my first designs.

(click on image to view more details)

Wow! Features to Implement:

1. Create a New Sacred ceremonies page with past & future offerings, and more details on what the offering entails.
2. Redesign the main Offerings page to allow for quicker navigation, and ensure the four offerings are clear.
3. Link to these from a drop-down menu in the navigation, and the expandable menu on the Offering page.

Wow! #1: New Sacred Ceremonies Page

Problem

This page previously only offered a signup form with very little information.  This left the users confused and unsure if they wanted to sign up, as they weren't sure what the offering entailed.​

Solutions

A full page redesign that includes a similar layout to other offerings pages and full details of the offering.  There's also an expandable menu to give examples of past offerings, and a button that leads to a signup form, not a waitlist.

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Research

I first looked at the header sections of the two consistent offerings pages that existed.

Design

And made a low-fidelity wireframe of the new Sacred Ceremonies page to mimic them.

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Final Design

Finally, I created a high-fidelity wireframe, with a new functional expandable menu to showcase past ceremonies and what they included.

Before

• Just a signup form to get on the waitlist.
• Dark background​ and larger header image, neither of which match other offerings pages.

After

• Layout that matches other offerings pages.
• Full description of the offering with pertinent details.
• signup button that leads to signup form, not a waitlist.
• Examples of past ceremonies to give context and further information.

Wow! #2: Redesigned Main Offerings Page

Problems

1. She already had an expandable menu at the top of the page, but there were no links to more information there. 
2. ​Some users felt the Offerings page was very long and a lot to read, especially on mobile. 
3. Users were confused as to why there were four options below, but only three in the expandable menu.​

Solutions

1. Remove the long descriptions of each offering, and condense them into the expandable menu, including a link to each offering’s page. 
2. Under 1:1 Deepening, both offerings offer separate buttons and descriptions, so it's clear there are four offerings.​

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Wow! #3: New Navigation Drop-Down Menu

Problem

Users had to return to the Offerings page and scroll down to find the offering they were interested in each time to go to that page.

Solution

In addition to the expandable menu above, I also designed a drop-down submenu from the main navigation to go to each offering’s page more quickly.

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Updated User Flow

After implementing these designs, the user flow will be more simplified.  Users can sign up for the Sacred Ceremonies offering quicker, and will not have to search around for answers or be left with emailing Elizabeth as their only option.

​Consistency in the pages and navigation also helps build trust with the users, so they always know where and how to find information.

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Final Design & Prototype

Below is a video walkthrough of my final designs in a prototype or you can view the prototype yourself.

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Bonus Deliverable: Email Capture Designs

After redesigning the Offerings pages & navigation, my secondary goal was to create some email capture design options that would seamlessly match her branding. 

This item was in the “How?” section of my “How, Now, Wow!” ideation stage because I wasn’t sure how her email subscription service would let her display these, especially since she’s currently thinking of switching from ConvertKit to Kajabi.

​Here are three examples of what they could look like in the header, footer, and at the end of blog posts.

Conclusions

Learnings & Challenges

Learnings

This was my first time working on a project outside of school from start to finish, so I learned so much about the entire process.  I had to decide where to start and what to focus on, which was exciting as I had agency over what I felt was important and what to include in my process.  As a systems thinker, it was fantastic to see this view of the whole process and understand why each step was important, and how they all worked together to support each other, which helped deepen my understanding of each step.
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This project was also very different because I had an actual client I was working with!  It was fun to be able to ask her questions and learn more about her and her business and goals.  ​I learned a lot about documenting my process and sharing it with her.

Challenges

Finding Users

In finding users, I was most successful when talking to people in person, connecting with them, and then asking if they’d be willing to help me with this project.  Putting out calls via digital channels did not yield as many quality users.

New Software

Figma prototyping is still new to me, so this was great practice.  I watched many online tutorials and had to take lots of brain breaks, but I’m satisfied with the results and am eager to keep learning in this way.

Client Feedback & Iterations

Some concerns came up when presenting my designs to the client, which will require some design iterations.  This is to be expected though, as the design process is circular!
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For example, Elizabeth had hesitations about removing the beautifully crafted descriptions and photos on the Offerings page and putting everything in the expandable menu.  This led me to make a new iteration with the same expandable menu I designed, but the buttons would link to the descriptions in the sections below instead of to the offerings page directly.  This would leave the longer offerings page, but still adds efficiency in getting to more information, and clarifies the four offerings.

Next Steps

Since Elizabeth prefers the full descriptions on the Offerings page to just the expandable menu, I’d love to do some live testing on this page.

• A/B split test: 
  • Expandable menu only or full descriptions?
  • Expandable menu buttons lead to sections or new pages?
• Heat Mapping: Where do customers spend more time?

Other than that, I’d want to test the site for any accessibility issues before working within her WordPress account to bring these designs to life.

Further Steps

Down the road, I’d like to:

• Continue to build out consistent pages for each new offering.
• Once Google Analytics is set up, come back in 3 months to look at user data, then monitor on an ongoing basis every quarter to identify usage patterns and inform any future enhancements.
• She’s thinking of switching from ConvertKit to Kajabi, so once that’s decided, come back in 3 months to collect data on the number of new subscribers, and continue to check this every quarter.
  • From there, it would be nice to do some A/B testing on the email capture placements to see which location on her site gets more signups.

Conclusion

I was excited to present my findings to the client at the end of the project.  It was great to see my whole process from start to finish, and I was able to communicate it simply with this slideshow so that she could understand and find it useful.  She was happy to know about some issues from the users' perspectives, and was excited to implement some of my ideas!

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Thank you for reading!

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