Laura MacNeil Consultancy
A website redesign to help our client Laura MacNeil offer her services to a new audience.
My Role
UX Researcher & Designer
Competitive Analysis, Website Audit, Usability Testing, Wireframing
January 2023 - February 2023
Overview
Laura MacNeil is a digital consultant that helps solve business needs through the art of storytelling. Laura recently became an approved Canadian Digital Adoption Program (CDAP) advisor, a program that helps small business owners transform their digital platform.
1. Help Laura advertise her status as a new CDAP advisor on her existing website
2. Define her niche as a digital storyteller to help her stand out against other CDAP advisors
The Goals
The Solutions
1. Create a new page on Laura's website explaining her role as a CDAP advisor
2. Reposition Laura's content to better explain her services as a strategic storyteller
Personas
Since Laura acquired a new audience through the CDAP, we felt it was important to create personas to better understand and empathize with the users. These personas were created with demographics provided by Laura and research on the CDAP program eligibility.
Competitive Analysis
First, we looked at other CDAP advisors sites (4 in total) to gather inspiration for our new page design. Using a spreadsheet with common design heuristics, we wrote down our opinions on each website and actionable items to implement in our design.
Below are a few examples of what we saw in each of our competitors:
Click the images to see our insights.
Website Audit
After our competitive analysis, we conducted an audit for Laura’s current website to help understand what changes can be made to improve content and usability. Using a spreadsheet provided Nordstream, we analyzed Laura’s site for common design and accessibility standards.
Below are a few examples of what we saw during our website audit:
Click the images to see our insights.
Usability Testing
After the website audit, in order to test the functionality of Laura’s website, we wanted to hear what users had to say. Moderated usability testing was done remotely to gather user feedback.
The main goals for this usability test was to check if users could navigate the site smoothly, and if they understand the services that Laura provides to businesses. Five participants were recruited through convenience sampling.
After the usability testing, the qualitative data were coded and analyzed using an affinity map.
Below are a few key takeaways from our usability testing:
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Users were confused about the services being provided by Laura
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Users were unsure of what “strategic storytelling” meant
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Some users found the previous work case studies hard to read because they had different formats
Sketching
Sitemap
A new sitemap was created to incorporate the new CDAP page. Furthermore, there was a broken link in the original site and therefore was taken out in the new sitemap.
Sketches
After our sitemap, we gathered as a team to sketch how we wanted to present the new CDAP page as well as organize the other content on Laura’s website.
Wireframing
With our sketches, we began crafting our low-fidelity screens on Figma. These screens were presented to Laura, and after a few rounds of feedback, we iterated on them before moving on to our high-fidelity wireframes. Ultimately, we kept most of the pages the same but implemented a few elements from our sketches per Laura’s approval.
New CDAP page
A CDAP Banner was created to display across all pages of her website. This allows users to instantly recognize that Laura is now a CDAP advisor.
A clear step-by-step CDAP process was created to ensure users understand how to become part of the program. This designed decision was informed by our competitive analysis (Flatsix Technologies).
A clear CTA button was added to Laura's website. The design audit showed that there were no clear CTA buttons on her pages, which caused confusion for users. Furthermore, the buttons were changed to red to adhere to WCAG standards, as well as stand out from the rest of the page.
Previous Services page
The 5 step process was hard to read with the centered alignment. We opted to show a diagram to help users understand Laura's process more clearly.
Similar to the 5 step process, users in our usability testing expressed that the services listed in a centered aligned list made it hard to read. We decided to merge the list into bullet points and categorize them.
A CTA button was added to help users navigate where to go next. Ideally, a user would book contact Laura to book a free 30 minute consultation.
New Services page
The Future
The future of Laura’s business as a new CDAP advisor is exciting. We were able to help Laura define her niche as a storyteller and set her apart from other advisors.
Due to time constraints, we were not able to do another round of usability testing to gather user feedback on our new wireframes. A/B testing would have been a great method to compare her existing website to the newly created screens. Furthermore, we were not able to address a few insights from the usability testing in our wireframes, such as reformatting the case studies. That being said, Laura plans to work on that during her next project.
The Canadian Digital Adoption program is an incredible opportunity for small business owners to help uplevel their digital platforms, and we are hopeful that Laura’s new website will help them grow their business.
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