Increasing user confidence and engagement in a women-empowering program

Hackathon - Website update for OMG W.O.W.

Summary

My hackathon team and I worked with OMG W.O.W. (client), a nonprofit with a mission to bridge the equity gap and empower Black women through education, mentorship and community, to improve their website in 48 hours. The new website was created with focus on clear copywriting, platform and content organization, and readability. The update led to a decrease in bounce rate, increase in time spent on homepage, and improved engagement rates, allowing the client to meet business goals.

Role
UX Designer, worked in all stages with focus in visual design, overall user flow and copywriting

Scope
Competitive analysis, ideation, user flows, Visual design, copywriting

Skills
Wordpress, Beaver Builder, copywriting, SEO

Team
Project manager, BE engineer, SEO specialist

The challenge

Our client’s original website was failing to meet these business goals:

  • Gaining members

  • Attracting donors and sponsors

  • Engaging mentors

  • Gaining newsletter sign-ups

After listening to the client and their user research, users hit pain points navigating the website with ease, and struggled to stay engaged with the overall website and follow through on CTA due to text overload and overlooked visual cues. In other words, the website fell short in these three areas: 

  1. Strong and clear messaging

  2. Organization

  3. Readability

Why are we doing this? (value)

  • Increase the number of membership and newsletter sign ups

  • Attract and gain donors, sponsors and mentors

  • Decrease cognitive overload of page viewers

  • Optimize website flow

  • Improve usability and readability

Our hypothesis was that, If we create an intuitive and enjoyable website, then:

  • Users will save time when finding the information they’re looking for

  • Levels of engagement will increase

  • Users will have a strong understanding of the mission and services

  • The completion rate of forms and CTAs will improve, thus improving the number of members, donors, mentors and newsletter sign ups

Considerations and constraints

  • Our team was tasked with delivering quick updates based on the information provided by the client

  • Usage of existing media pieces such as images, videos, branding colors and logos

The old platform

Solution

Based on our findings from client and competitor analyses, I focused on filling the top three gaps:

Messaging:

Utilized relatable, mission-driven copy and content, and clearly communicated the various opportunities of involvement (membership, financial partnership and mentorship) to enhance the brand’s mission and increase sign ups

Organization:

Improved the the navigation bar by simplifying the copy and including a way to show page status, and optimized sitemap to help users find what they need more efficiently

Readability:

Optimized text style to align with ADA compliance and made CTA buttons and form fields more visible, to enhance the overall experience of the platform and increase engagement

Impact:

  • Decrease to a 22% bounce rate

  • Increase in time spent on homepage from 1:12 to 2:32

  • 30% increase in overall engagement with buttons and form-fills

Key learnings:

  • There were lots of constraints, which was very challenging at first but forced me to think outside the box

  • Look at the bigger picture. It’s still a successful step in delivering quick solutions even if they aren’t “perfect” but still lead to meeting business goals