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TL;DR
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The 6-month average bounce rate decreased by 18%
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New user signups surpassed 1000
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Vastly improved navigation IA
Project Background
Somos.tech is witnessing slowed user growth and asked if I could find out what the cause of it is and design a solution for it.
Depicted is the as-is website landing page.
Business Objective
About Somos.tech
Somos.tech is a non-profit aimed at connecting the Latina/o community to free resources that will help them land roles in tech.
Discover <
Site Mapping & Web Analytics
Whenever I try solving a new problem I like to get a healthy understanding of where the as-is product stands.
I mapped out the site's many web pages and noticed many of the pages had similarly named pages.
I also noticed the site had an overwhelming amount of motion graphics that made the site slow and had a high bounce rate of 54%.
Socializing Initial Findings With Stakeholders
I had follow-up conversations with the CEO, PM, and Lead Engineer. In my discussions, it was revealed that the CEO had directly updated the website in recent months and had not heard any complaints about the website running slowly.
In a session where I asked the CEO how they create the site on WIX, he showed me that it runs perfectly on his computer. The computer in question is a several thousand dollar custom-built PC easily capable of withstanding the many motion graphics that the CEO can add in WIX.
Discovery Focused, Moderated, Task-Based, Usability Tests
At this point, I have a good idea of what may be going on, but I need to see how this impacts users on the ground.
I recruited a cohort of 8 participants
Because the website's main purpose was to help Latina/o people break into tech, I gave them the task of using the site to find out how to become a SWE.
Define <>
Usability Test Findings
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The webpage loads terribly slow.
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The amount of text, motion graphics, and navigation options feels overwhelming.
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The website does not visually communicate that it is a for-us, by-us online Latin Community
Tree Test Findings
In an umoderated tree test of the site's navigation menu with 63 participants it shows only one participant was able to find the correct page for becoming a SWE.
Current Problem Statement
When users first visit the website, they experience a great deal of friction stemming from long load times, for website performance, walls of text, and a nav menu that is difficult to navigate.
This is the likely culprit to the poor number of new sign ups and high bounce rate.
Design <><
Design Goals
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Make a design that is simple and can load quickly
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Simplify the navigation menu options by grouping like concepts and removing redundancies.
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Create a home page with a strong Latin identity without empowering stereotypes or over-representing a single culture.
Making A Simple Design
The as-is home page design features long explanations and disjointed visualizations, making the experience seem intimidating and amateurish.
Simplifying Navigation
To better understand the reason for the navigation hierarchy's poor performance, I led a discovery-focused, moderated card sorting test with 8 participants and asked them to think aloud as they grouped cards with web page names under nav categories.
Creating A Strong, Latin Visual Identity
The design I proposed prioritizes strong visuals over words and a good balance of white space to draw the user's eye to key details without motion graphics.
A key pain point was the similarly sounding webpage names for example, community group, community online, online community, community chat, meet you community etc.
I created low fidelity mockups of how we would rearrange information on web pages to reduce the navigation options from 60 to just 11 with the principle that we will do our best to only rearrange information and not delete it.
My favorite part of this redesign was solving the problem of the site not feeling "Latin enough." Usually, this is inconsequential feedback, but for a for-us-by-us online Latin community, this is a problem.
This is tricky to navigate without creating something that emboldens stereotypes or over-represents one part of the diaspora over the other. However, all of my travels to Central and South America prepared me for this moment in the 8 countries I traveled to in Latin America, one thing stood out in common. Tile!
My fascination with the Middle Eastern craft brought to the Americas by the Spanish was about to pay off. Pictured is a tile from my travels to Mexico, Peru, Panama, and Argentina.
What resulted was an elegant tilework background that I made in Illustrator that featured tech and floral motifs. This allowed me to give the website a subtle Latin texture without putting the theme strongly on the nose and risking patronizing our Latina/o audience. (The Portugese/Spanish agnostic Saludos didn't hurt either).
Retesting
Evaluative, Moderated, Task-Based, Usability Testing
Repeating measures from our discovery based usability testing with 8 new participants yielded a 100% task completion and very positive remarks on the UI.
Evaluative, Unmoderated Tree Testing
Repeating measures from our first round of tree testing with 63 new users found that the new navigation IA performed significantly better than the as-is.
The Lasting Impact
6 Months Later
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Bounce rates plummeted! (From 56% to 38%)
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Skyrocketing new user signups (from 250 to 1000+)
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Endless kudos from partnering organizations!
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