Tia is the business owner of Lomi Manhattan, an independent massage therapy business in New York City. She wanted help redesigning her website in order to expand her business and bring in high quality clientele.
Lomi Manhattan
4 weeks
UX designer
UX design
Prototype
The challenge here was to improve upon an already existing website by simplifying the information architecture and creating an online booking process in order to increase client conversion rate and help the business stand out in a competitive market.
I created a new web site in order to reduce cognitive overload for users, then integrate online booking into an evocative website design. I worked closely with the business owner in order to fully understand her needs throughout the process.
I began by an analysis of the already existing sitemap in order to understand the information architecture. I noticed that there was a lot of information and an overwhelming number of paths that the user could explore.
There was an opportunity to improve upon information architecture in the navigation bar. I began with research into other local businesses to find the most common links in the navigation bar. I synthesized my findings into an affinity map and decided to reduce the amount of links. The intention was to define the most commonly used links to create a sense of familiarity for the users.
I took the most common navigation bar links from my research to define a new sitemap. No information was lost, but now existed in a more deliberate category.
Next step was to condense similar services to create a less daunting experience for new users. This took a lot of processing of which services were most common and which could be combined under the same name. Through several itterations, we condensed 14 services down to 8 total. I created a hierarchy based on a balance between client demand and business profit.
There was an opportunity to increase efficiency by helping the business transition to online booking. This would also allow for a cancellation fee to be implemented. I designed a three step process to integrate an online booking software seamlessly into the website.
The business owner was previously unable to collect a deposit and this was a major pain point due to last minute client cancellations. The website redesign allows clients to pay a deposit online to ensure confidence and control in business sustainability.
It was great working with Casey through this process of redesigning my website. He was very clear and communicative at every step.
With more time on this project I would implement user testing to make sure these designs are usable and I would be able to track the website over several months through Google analytics to show improvement based on the new design implementations.
I learned how to work with a site holder and find balance between their needs and the design goals. In the future, I would build and present more clear examples of why certain designs work better than others, in order to help the site holder gain more confidence in the design.
