Complete redesign for The Back School website
The client, a company offering online and in-person ergonomics expertise and products, was interested in a complete redesign of its outdate website. My challenge was to offer the client a newly designed website that was fresh, modern, and most of all, super easy for users to navigate and interact with. This also included revising how The Back School’s (backschool.net) online courses were presented, as well as developing a completely new e-commerce experience.
The Problem
The team needed to evaluate and update an existing site with hundreds of legacy pages and organize it into an easily digestible form, while seamlessly adding a learning experience, an e-commerce shop, promotional emails, and transactional emails. And we had to make it all work on a new CMS.
My role
The team for this project consisted of the UX designer, a project manager, front- and back-end engineers, two internal stakeholders, and the client.
As the UX designer on this project, I:
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Analyzed the old site to see how we could reorganize it in a more logical fashion
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Created a whole new e-commerce experience
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Designed the look and feel of the new site, integrating new graphics, fonts, and colors
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Created a completely new learning experience
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Redesigned the blog and informational pages
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Created new email templates for promotion and transactions
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Created styled Power Point templates for the instructors to use online, and certificates for students who completed ergonomic courses
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Worked with the client to develop this desktop-first design project into one that would work responsively on mobile
The Process
Research
Research for this site was a little more difficult than most. It was challenging to find other companies comparable to The Back School, so I began by researching each section e-commerce, learning, and informational–separately. I wanted to combine the best learning experience with an elegant e-commerce solution and intuitive, easy-to-digest informational pages. This formed the foundation for the design process.
Design
As the UX designer on this project I:
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Started with wireframes and prototypes and then mapped out user journeys, earning client approval with just a few iterations
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Produced hi-fidelity comps to develop the look and feel the site would take on
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Developed the e-commerce pages, which were the most complex to design but needed to be simple to use, keeping users engaged throughout the checkout process
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Applied the look and feel to the wireframes I’d created to design The Back School’s online learning courses
Timeframe
The team worked in an agile environment to accelerate project completion. Sprints were two weeks each, with tickets created by the project manager and split up among the team on sprint planning days. As soon as I finished designing a section, it would go off to engineering team to be implemented. We met daily for scrums to review how things were going and to work out any issues along the way.
Outcome
Using an Agile workflow helped keep this massive project on track: we were able to go live in a matter of about five months. As with any new site redesign, it took a little time for users to warm up to the new design. After about four months, users were singing the new site’s praises. Traffic increased about 20%, while sales for online courses and products saw an increase of about 30%. And onsite consultations increased 40%! The client was very happy with this re-imagining of the site, which helped it to reach its full potential.