Role
UX/UI Designer
Scope
Digital website design, UX, strategy, art direction, branding, research, user interviews, development QA
Context
After selling $5M in pre-orders and being featured in TechCrunch, CNN, CBS, Forbes, Gizmodo, BBC for their revolutionary Pilot Translating Earpiece, Waverly Labs needed a new website that could accurately reflect their mission statement to interested folks visiting their website.
Brief
Waverly Labs realized their website didn't serve the full spectrum of their products anymore. The previous landing page was focused on their primary Pilot headphones. However, given the YTD growth of the company and plans to launch a new product, Ambassador, we needed to redesign the landing page to educate site visitors on their various product offerings and guide them to gain knowledge about their technology.
The previous website emphasized their viral IndieGoGo campaign but didn't serve the function of informing the customer beyond that. This led to a mass influx of aggravated customers who flooded their social media accounts with product inquiries and shipping notifications for their pre-orders.
Goals
The Waverly Labs website is often a customer's first experience or interaction with the brand. It's a chance to build trust, introduce our brand, voice, and product. It is where we captured leads or directed traffic to a more detailed product landing page. Our goals were to:
1. Showcase the full Waverly Labs product offering as a system of technology built for living life free from language barriers, not just the Pilot headphones they went viral for
2. Decrease inquiries to Waverly Labs social media and support email
3. Reduce product confusion
4. Increase sales of the Waverly Labs Pilot
Approach
We had two different approaches for the landing page design we wanted to test: one landing page that focused on driving pre-sales and one rich in content about the technology behind the Pilot's features.
The first design was colorful and aimed to incite excitement and engagement in our audience. It also focused more on targeting users to convert them into customers by featuring a large testimonials section.
The second approach was more minimalist and aimed to educate our site's visitors about the Pilot's features. It was broken down into multiple sections with a 100% viewport height so the user could focus on digesting small chunks of information at a time.
We also wanted to introduce a new page to the website: a support hub that would help answer any questions a user may have regarding their order or about how the technology works.
Research
We conducted 5 user interviews to evaluate the first round of designs in clickable InVision prototypes. This helped the team determine which design best reflects Waverly Labs as an innovative technology company and minimize product confusion.
The interview questions included:
1. How you would describe Waverly Labs if they were a person?
2. What does Waverly Labs do?
3. How do you find help if you have an existing pre-order?
The participants used words like "fun" and "personable" when describing the brand voice of the first design and words like "edgy," "sleek," and "futuristic" for the second design. When consulted, the company's executives aligned more closely with the descriptions of the second design.
At the same time, I conducted a test with two separate groups of 3 people each about the individual prototypes. These questions included:
1. What are three features of the Pilot that you remember?
2. How does the Pilot work?
3. How many colours does the Pilot come in?
We then compared the results of the two landing pages against each other. An overwhelming number of participants answered the 3 questions correctly when shown the second design, making our decision easier when it came time to choose which to move forward with.
Outcome
Our conversion rates increased by 10 percent and we sold 35,000 units in our initial pre-sale. We also saw a a 50% drop in customer support tickets relating to product confusion.
