Island Spa's current website was created from the point of view of a graphic designer, but stakeholders were unsure of the user experience. They feel that all the information they have was necessary but at the same time it bombards a first time user with too much information. They've heard complaints that the site is hard to navigate and can be hard to find information.
Island Spa desires simplicity for a first time user.
In order to have a wholistic view of the user experience of their website I created a survey with the goal of understanding spa goers experience using the website. I posed questions regarding ease of navigation, satisfaction, issues and potential improvements they would like to see.
The survey results and stakeholder insights helped me create a persona to design for with specific wants and needs to keep in mind when continuing through my website audit.
With the persona as a guide, I created 3 user flows that Anne could go through when using the Island Spa website:
I created a sitemap of their current website after our initial meeting in order to visualize the layout. After discussion, their website manager & project manager created a version and I created my own version of the sitemap. We came together to develop the version below which we felt would better address the needs of their customers while still aligning with an Information Architecture Island Spa wanted for their site.
After coming together to design a sitemap that would satisfy both stakeholders and spa goers I conducted a Heuristic Evaluation based on Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics. The goal of the evaluation was to give Island Spa a general idea of where their website stood from a UX perspective but to also give me recommendations to improve the usability aspects of their website.
Below is some of the analysis that was done on their website:
Find the full analysis here:
Heuristic EvaluationAfter the discussing my Heuristic Evaluation findings I discussed some additional suggestions from a general UX/UI perspective that I thought would be useful.
The full analysis can be found in the previous link.
After presenting my findings to Island Spa, they told me that it was great seeing their website from the perspective of usability heuristics. They had a feeling about some of the issues that I mentioned but didn't know how to put it into words. The presentation gave them a more concrete idea of usability issues within the existing website and ideas of how to modify it.
Island Spa was very satisfied with the work that I've done and is continuing to work with me for post website audit work such as making changes to their Information Architecture, visual design and other general usability changes. We came to the conclusion to make changes iteratively in multiple phases and conduct preference or A/B testing in order to gauge user feedback and make changes to the live website.
The website and project manager will meet with other staff to discuss our findings and receive approval and feedback on additional changes that they want to make for their webiste.
Working with my first company was a great opportunity. I gained experience collaborating with stakeholders from a real company and using a user design process to define a problem they had and come up with solutions to usability problems in an existing website. These solutions will increase the conversion rate of website users to actual spa goers and increase overall sales.
Working on two separate sitemaps and coming together to create a version we both agreed upon reinforced the importance of not being too attached to my own designs and collaborating to make decisions that align the business while also improving the experience of the user.
