We redesigned HiIQ’s website to improve customer confidence, increase conversion rates and retain existing customers.
CLIENT
HiIQ Tutoring Bondi
ROLE
Tiara Dobbs – Product Designer, Website redesign, Research and basic rebranding.
CHAPTER 1
Who is HiIQ and what happened?
HiIQ is a humble but mighty K-12 tutoring centre based in Bondi Junction. Before Covid, you were only able to catch them by walking past their centre or finding a phone number on their old website. Most tutoring was done face-to-face. Fast forward, businesses got shut down and tutorials came to a halt. It lacked basic features that placed it well below competitors.
The owner tried to clean up the website but it became a dumping ground with:
- Inadequate program descriptions
- Inaccurate or outdated blog posting
- Subpar images and font
- Poor grammar and content with a different tone of voice
CHAPTER 2
How might we create an online experience that reaches our goals?
What the owners assumed…
- Overhaul of website design not required
- Some organisational problems—unclear product descriptions, categorise products better, fix grammar etc.
- People care more about quality of the delivered program—not how it looks or is described on the website.
But, I had different assumptions…
- Overhaul of website was required
- People care more about how it looks on the website—since people only give you one chance for a good first impression.
- Needed to market HiIQ better—who is HiIQ and why should people care?
CHAPTER 3
Understanding our Users
According to this book, the target market for those purchasing tutoring for their children are:
Men and Women
Parents 35 – 55 years old
All races
Middle-high incomes
50+% of initial contact are made online rather than over the phone.
- Typical habits when enquiring about similar services in person and online.
- Influencing factors when deciding on similar services in person and online.
We also interviewed some of the existing customers to find out what we were doing wrong
-
- The current HiIQ website—what is the good, bad and the ugly?
- Their competitors—what do they typically look for when buying similar services online?
The key insights
4 main reasons why our clients purchase tutoring services for their child.
%
Their child’s has expressed interest
%
A child’s low grades along side a teachers recommendation
%
Parent wishes the child to get ahead with their studies
%
A parent wants their child to learn a new skill
Most parents trust the standard of tutoring they are just time-poor which means they rather contact via an online link than a phone call.
%
Direct email
%
Enquire over the phone
%
Enquires via online link
%
Enquires in person
100% of parents would rather search online through mobile than desktop.
- Quality program descriptions
- Reviews on google and on the website from other parents
- Trusted, personal and engaging for their child
- Trusted Reviews
- Results for their child
CHAPTER 4
All 10 parents said the website was a great resource. However, there were a number of pain points
1. Cluttered menu space with outdated style and inconsistent fonts.
2. Low resolution trade mark logo.
3. Non-existed mobile or table formatting.
5. Inconsistent or juvenile font use.
6. Unevenly composed store front image.
7. Screenshot parking information with low resolution.
8. Screenshot parent testimonies with low resolution.
9. Inconsistent formatting with broken links and stock images used throughout the website.
Further Findings
10. Scam emails were being sent through the contact form.
11. Little to no information about programs that were being run.
12. Most information on blog posts were outdated or no longer relevant with broken links.
Our user research determined we needed to complete a redesign of the entire website.
HiIQ clients needed features that resemble real-life experiences such as sight, smell or touch to feel confident that the product will meet their expectations, which the current website could not provide.
CHAPTER 5
The redesign had to achieve these goals in order to be successful.
1. Playful and Imaginative
The redesign should be visually refreshed to reflect the playful personality of the business and their tutors.
2. Clear and Concise
The redesign should clearly communicate relevant and useful information about the services HiIQ offers so the parents feels confident about their commissioning of HiIQ.
Card sorting to site map
To structure our ideas during wireframing, we completed a card sorting exercise with our 7 users to categorise and condense our information architecture.
We focused on designing a simultaneous desktop and mobile friendly website for our online shopping enthusiasts.
1. Trademark logo redesign for high resolution graphics.
2. Simple and easy navigating with mobile adaptive burger menu.
3. Original isometric graphics to replace the Non-stock images on the landing pages.
4. Background gradient using 50% opacity branding colour scheme.
5. Mobile adaptive web design.
6. Redesign of blog posts page with simple and original graphics without stock images.
7. Redesign of parking information with google maps links and walking distance from the parking location to HiIQ tutoring centre.
8. Added contact information and a contact form and enquiry information.
9. Google spam filter attached to minimise spam emails from the website.
10. Original graphics with cross race imagery for inclusivity and to exemplify the cross cultural nature of the tutoring centre.
CHAPTER 6
Success within 3 months of launch!
- Online sales increased by 24% compared to its previous 6 months.
- Personalised products which never made a sale, are now one of Daraoma’s best sellers!
- 21% of online sales were repeating customers.
- 79% of online sales were new customers.
- Average order value increased by 31%
What I learnt along the way…
The owners weren’t convinced that an overhaul of the website was needed until they saw our user research results.
They knew their services were good quality but didn’t realise how badly it translated online.
With simple additional features and clear descriptions, they saw how it could provide clients a lot more confidence to purchase their services.
Building a responsive website is hard work!
I really pushed my limited (what I thought) technical abilities in front and back end web development. Fun project nonetheless!
Compromise with the client is sometimes needed
Some of the features on the website had to stay the same such as colour scheme, copy and parking information, and client testimonies. I was able to negotiate some of the copy to be changed as well as a definite declutter, however many of the assets such as the tag line, descriptions had to stay the same.
Pretty impressive right? We should talk about it!
Up next…
Where-in.space