The dilemma

Users had issues finding the content they love, this was affecting revenue generation for the business.

The implication

As a result the average bounce rate was 77%, already there was poor discoverability of the platform.

Reduce monthly average bounce rate from 77% to 50%

Improve mobile UX ( > 90% of users)

Optimise SEO and Google indexing

Increase discoverability

A road block

The initial timeline for the project was set at 6 weeks, but on beginning our research we discovered we had underestimated the problems we set out to solve. We communicated this to stakeholders and apologised for the setback, while giving a more concrete deadline they agreed to.

Audit & Analysis

We had to go through the current sites existing data to study conversion, drop off rates, and platform usage. A comprehensive UX audit was also done.

Some insights discovered :

>90% of users were mobile

Users dropped off at the top navigation, indicating they had problems locating content they were interested in.

Confusing categorisation

Obtrusive ad placements

Poor load time

Poor information architecture

Dishing out the survey

The product already had thousands of daily users, so we reached out to them via its social media pages, sharing links to our qualitative survey.

Here are some of the most common responses:

The website is too busy, things are all over the place

It takes a long time to load

The ads are too distracting

Navigation is difficult, i cant find things i need easily

Some articles are not in the right category

Poor information architecture

Building the site map

On discovering issues with navigation and the likes, we decided to build out a site map to list existing sections and categories.

There were some repeated, and non functional sections so we collaborated with the editorial team, to categorise properly, and remove the unnecessary

Presenting low fidelity

Due to the nature of the project we had to present a detailed low fidelity explaining all the new flows to the stake holders and defending our design decisions.

This was very helpful as presenting with a clear direction in mind led to a brainstorming session, where more interesting ideas came up from the stakeholders and team.

After a few iterations and blocks we were able to create a product that was simple, functional, pleasing and easy to use, which directed translated into increased conversion, The web and mobile responsive version was built.

Heres some interesting stuff we worked on:

The navigation

One of users primary concerns was how hard it was to find content they love, so we came up something simpler. Now users could find content easily and never lose their way.

The categories were spread out along side major features on the web, with a drop down and bottom nav style on mobile with a deeper structure within each category

Categories- A delight

The idea was to improve recall and recognition via use of color, thus creating an opportunity for users to feel more joy, which would improve conversion and grow the business.

With the editorial team and branding team, we came up with colors and illustrations that best fit each category.
This was a very exciting session as everyone had different ideas on what worked best, but it was easy to find common ground.

Improving the search function

The existing product had a search that was too simple considering the volume of content. After discussing with the engineering team, we decided to improve it by adding filters by date, author and category

Ads-Can’t live without em

One of the main complaints from users was how obtrusive the ads were and how it interrupted their flow. We set out to incorporate them in a much simpler way, as it was necessary for business revenue.

Impact

Coming soon, a soft launch was done and we are working on implementing feedback.