PROJECT BACKGROUND
Great Stuff tasked Edelman with redesigning their website to improve the user experience design and launch the new visual brand. With e-commerce on the horizon, we needed to source a tech partner to implement a programmatic, integrated product finder with their product inventory.
MY ROLE: UX LEAD, UI CO-LEAD
Client workshop, user research, competitive / best in class audit, information architecture, wireframes, visual design, content strategy, photography sourcing, client presentation & deck creation
Project Summary
This project was the first full website redesign I worked on at Edelman. As the UX Lead and UI design co-lead, it was a great opportunity for me to work independently and efficiently as well as collaborating with a senior UI designer.
As always, in order to get the information architecture right, I became a brief expert on all things Great Stuff, as well as familiarize DIY & Pro contractor audiences.
Challenge
With the launch of the new brand, Great Stuff needed to elevate the visual design, improve the user experience and gather deeper analytics through the website to deliver actionable insights to the marketing team. Along with this, we needed to implement a where to buy product solution that drives users to purchase and enables robust reporting.
The main challenge of this project was the off-shore dev team and impending development restrictions. With the fast timeline and overlapping wireframe / design sprints, the dev team began collaborating when we were almost finished with the designs.
Solution
The competitive audit, client workshop and stakeholder interviews informed how we could improve the experience on the website. In order to sell more product, Great Stuff needed to address the true needs of the user. Therefore, we planned for a phase 1 and phase 2 version of the website. Phase 2 (currently working on now) is informed by the users, where phase 1 was expedited and based on business goals and user assumptions from the client.
• Inspired and built confidence for customers by creating a how-to project section with instructional and compelling video content, organizing content by project / problem focus rather than audience based.
• Modernized and improved user experience by creating a comprehensive product gallery with robust filtering options to adapt to the project based organization, improving on-site search and ensuring consistent information displayed for each product.
• Educated consumers and increased product awareness by designing a visual and animated header to draw the users attention, design the product pages to feel like e-commerce, provided educational resources (step by step project guides, FAQ, downloadable resources),
Results
We launched Great Stuff’s new brand and website which included a successful integration with Price Spider (where to buy tool), extensive product information & imagery & assets, how to project information, step by step product guides and more.
The client continues to be impressed with the work as we bring forward the UX learnings, analytics recommendations and improved design for phase 2.
REFLECTIONS / LEARNINGS
Working with the dev team in India created major pain points during the website build portion of the project. Without knowing the needs of the dev team while designing, we needed to adapt some of the designs to what they were able to build.
In retrospect and seeing how the website turned out after launch I would have asked Edelman to allow time / hours for detailed annotations on the designs as well as and removed all animation from the website (as it could not be implemented correctly). Animation is intended to draw attention to areas of a site that are important, not distract or take away due to functionality deficits.