Greenacres English Academy: website redesign
Industry
Education
Duration
2 months
Roles
Research
Re-branding
UI/UX Design
SEO
Usability Testing
Greenacres English Academy website redesign.
Greenacres is an English school in Taiwan that was in need of a website revamp. The owner approached me with his concerns and the desire to a make the website more approachable and profitable. Through my work I was able to increase average website visit length and decrease bounce rate, leading to more parents reaching out through the contact form.
Greenacres differs from other schools because of its focus on STEM activities, something that I leveraged more heavily in my description on the new version.
First Steps
Identifying Challenges and Sympathizing with Users
The Problem
The owner was dissatisfied with site performance and aesthetics. The main problem was that parents were not using the website to find out about the school, instead they were calling the school. This was extremely inefficient and took up valuable worker time.
Aesthetically, the old site was dark, un-cohesive, and somewhat outdated according to the owner.
Only 3 out of 6 class cards were clickable, leading to much user confusion and annoyance.
Aesthetically, the owner expressed dissatisfaction with the website's color palette and font. Practically he wanted a more functional website that answered parent's questions and accurately explained the philosophy and scope of each class the school offered.
The Goal
Give the parents a professional impression and enough information to assure them that what they need can be found on the website, rendering a call unnecessary.
Preliminary Survey Findings
Major Pain Points
It was unclear what parts of the website were clickable and which weren't. This was mentioned in 70% of surveys.
It was unclear how to determine which class was a good fit for the child.
Some pages were difficult to access through the man home page, and were only findable through a dropdown on the side.
There was no Mandarin version of the site which was crucial for Taiwanese parents who didn't speak English
Aesthetic Problems
"too dark" according to the owner
un-cohesive font
obvious stock-image photos that do not represent the school
boiler plate message input box that was seldom used by parents
Design Implementation Goals
Clear, clickable class cards
Chinese version of site
Accessible class information and philosophy
A bright, professional, cohesive look
An inviting Call to Action that leads parents to send a message via the website's form
Primary User Persona
Problem Statement
The current website wastes school money because parents do not use it. They call to get the information they need because they are not able to get the information they need on the website as it is current not clear and navigable, as shown in the 92% bounce rate.
Preliminary Designs
Page Structure Design
This is a rough draft of the homepage and which parts would lead to other pages as well as the main information of the homepage.
"Why" Excercise
This exercise helped me get to the bottom of the problem and solution for the website by asking why until I reached the foundation.
User Flow Chart
After numerous iterations focusing on the layout of the homepage and class pages, a clean wireframe was made in Figma which was used as the template for the website redesign in Wix.
Wireframe
The website consists of the home page and information pages for each of the four class types, which have the same layout. Wireframes focused on the layout for these two page formats.
Testing
Methodology
Parents as well as teachers and assistants at cram schools were given full length screenshots of the old and new version of the website in various orders.
They were asked:
"Which one makes you feel more confident in the education of the school? What other thoughts do you have when comparing the two?"
Condensed Results
80% of participants mentioned the new version being easier for finding information, using words such as "layout" or "navigate"
surprisingly, only 2/5 participants liked the color scheme of the new layout. Most participants said they preferred the old colors, many saying that they often used "night mode" on their devices
A lot of work still needed to be done on the Chinese version of the site which is still being carried out.
60% of participants said that the new design was more "cohesive" or "uniform"
Website Redesign
Impact and Next Steps
Original Goals Realized
Clear, clickable class cards
Accessible class information and philosophy
An inviting Call to Action that leads parents to send a message via the website's form
A bright, professional, cohesive look
What I Learned
UX research with an existing client base - how to sympathize with existing clients and maintain the standards of an existing company
Navigating client expectations- following the guidelines set out by the client
Multi-Language design - considering formatting across languages
Working with existing branding - maintaining the branding expectations of the company and using it to inform design decisions
Impact
As of right now, the website analytics has shown the Bounce Rate has decreased by
21 %
All design goals were achieved except the Chinese version of the site which is still in progress.
Next Steps
the Chinese version of the website is still being worked on as unfortunately, my Chinese is not good enough for an accurate translation. This will make the website much more accessible for Taiwanese parents
As more data on the performance of the website comes in, further reworkings will