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As Director of Creative and User Experience, I lead the redesign of all of the Rewards Network partner websites, in an effort to address several usability issues. Using the company’s proprietary brand (iDine) as a sandbox, new features were designed that would eventually be deployed across all of the white-label websites.
Site analytics showed a bounce rate of 56.02% among mobile users and enrollment rates were on the decline month-over-month. This was largely due to the sites not being optimized for smartphones and tablets. We needed to act immediately to reverse the decline, however, development resources were limited.The team decided to take a two-phased approach to address the concerning metrics–create standalone mobile websites then proceed with a complete site overhaul the following year.
By re-engineering the framework and implementing UX best practices the bounce rate was reduced to 37%.
In partnership with the development team at Trilibis, the team deployed over a dozen mobile websites in record time.
Within the first week of launching, enrollment tripled as a result of a new mobile friendly 3-step enrollment form.
Establishing the framework for a fully responsive site
The first phase was to create a separate mobile-optimized product that lived outside of the antiquated CMS platform that all the partner websites were built on. The most critical functions (search, enrollment, account management, and reviewing dining locations) were retooled and adapted to work effectively on smaller screens.
Now faced with the redundancy of having three separate iDine digital products in the marketplace (on multiple CMS platforms), the solution was to transition to a fully responsive experience—a move that would free up development resources, while addressing known usability issues with the existing websites and standalone app. The responsive site would also allow us to modernize the look-and-feel, upon which I designed the new interface.
I started the UX process by gathering and reviewing all the website comments received from our members; this would provide some qualitative data, despite not having access to user testing tools. While some comments were a bit brutal, it was necessary to see and proved to be confirmation of a less than optimal user experience.
I then organized the member feedback by category and created a spreadsheet where the comments were further ordered by issue, partner, feature, and page. This card sorting exercise helped to identify the main user goals and where they were being impeded.
After user goals were defined, I then developed personas and user stories to conduct a heuristic evaluation of the partner sites. I captured my usability observations in a high-level scorecard, ranking each impeded goal by level of severity; an invaluable tool when communicating and prioritizing the problems we needed address to the broader team.
I concluded the UX process by developing wireframes that included my recommendations on improving the pitfalls that were plaguing the site usability. The wireframes would be the foundation upon which the following UI components and improved functionality would be built.
Replaced an ineffective two field search feature with a single input field, supported by three tabs, which enables users to search by location, cuisine, or features
Content on the search results pages was reorganized for better scanning to help users quickly identify the most relevant results. Additionally, a more intuitive sorting and filtering module was added to the top of the page—as users interact with it, results are dynamically updated.Content on the search results pages was reorganized for better scanning to help users quickly identify the most relevant results. Additionally, a more intuitive sorting and filtering module was added to the top of the page—as users interact with it, results are dynamically updated.
Converted a laborious three-page enrollment process into a single page with a simple two-step form. Non-essential fields were removed to lessen user fatigue and promote faster signups.
After the design strategy was approved, I created wireframes to organize the content and define the functionality of the components. Desktop and mobile wireframes were created simultaneously to ensure each component would be properly optimized for the respective device.
Clean and void of unnecessary elements, the newly designed page takes on more of an e-commerce product page feel. Additionally, supplemental editorial content boosts SEO while adding brand personality.
