Research

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Hotjar heatmap of the Massage Associates website on an iMac

Strength in numbers

Lake Austin Design

01 Research

Sample pulled from a client.

Before we start, we need to dive into the minds of our potential customers and ideal clients. We need to collect data to take the ego and guessing out of the design process.
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01. What is the main problem that we are trying to solve?
‍02. Who are the top 3 leaders within the industry?
‍03. How can the numbers help us keep the creative process focused?
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Data is key in this research phase. Our designs are based off data, and not personal preferences. Utilizing professional tracking tools such as Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, and Facebook Ads Library to see design trends and user psychology.
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Create

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It's important to know where we're starting before making any changes. Equipped with a heatmap of customer interactions, let's move onto the visuals and how fast it loads. For the rest of this example we're going to use prefare, a gourmet meal delivery service based out of Denver, CO.

Here's what they looked like at the start:

Prefare meal delivery website on a dark laptop

Prefare homepage on a MacBook Air: Dinner together in 15 minutes or less

Not the worst but let's examine how it loads for customers:

Google PageSpeed report for prefare-denver.com on an iPad, before optimization

Google PageSpeed report for prefare-denver.com on an iPhone

You can't make this stuff up - 11 seconds before first paint - that's grounds for a firing. Unfortunately that's not the worst we've fixed.

With 70-80% of traffic coming from mobile, it's very important to understand what your customers are seeing on a fresh load. Pull up your site in an incognito window now.

Convert

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First we review similar winners in your space. Continuing to use prefare, main competitors include Blue Apron and the Spicy Radish, a local Denver company. Additionally a player in this space, the farmer's dog does a great job of marketing.

Using these three sites we go section by section, reviewing each element. If all three companies are doing it, we are too. Don't just stick with the top three, explore other competitors as well.

Prefare promo bar offer designs at the top of the site

There are two irresistible offers as soon as you load the farmer's dog main website. These offers both take the customer directly to the checkout experience. Further, the offer scrolls with the customer as they travel down the page.

Prefare website with a new-customer discount banner

Martha Stewarts site does something similar.

Prefare announcement bar with an offer callout

Similarly, we'll place an offer inside the heade and keep it following the user throughout their time on the website

Exploring the main hero section, we notice almost all of these food sites combine two key elements, humans and food

Prefare hero video: Order our top-rated recipes today

Embodying our core demographic: young working families. We'll find a picture of a family eating fresh food around the dinner table:

Prefare hero: Gourmet family dinners in less than 15 minutes

Breaking down each section in this manner, we'll begin to form our new website.

Industry
Leading
Experience

Led not just by data-driven insights, we use our past experiences to drive decisions. From our over $1Billion in revenue produced for clients, we bring proven tactics designed to make you more money.

Starting with the nav, we'll examine 1. how often these items are clicked and 2. what's the main goal of this page? In prefare's case, the landing page is a sales page and we need to direct users to one place: the sale.

The other menu items detract from the narrative we want to tell the customers. We do put those links in the footer so customers can still find them.

Take a look at Hunt a Killer's clean and simple nav. Two links, one red CTA to give the product as a gift and the login for existing users.

The result? 8% increase in conversions. Additionally, no blow back from the support side. Customers can still find FAQ and contact links in the footer.

Nothing like the fear of missing out will drive sales. On every ecommerce build, we include a post-purchase upsell to drive additional revenue. We've seen up to 26% conversions for clients... that's extra revenue for just keeping the doors open.

Kinder Beauty Box checkout and one-time upsell offer on iPhone screens

Mixpanel analytics chart tracking site engagement

We'll fix your Google Analytics setup and configure any custom conversions that are necessary to understand how your business functions. We also bring in mixpanel or other tracking tools as needed.

Keeping
it
Simple

Sliders and videos in the hero section have to go. There is no control over what the customer first sees and it prevents you from knowing what imagery is resonating with customers that ultimately drives conversions.

Large companies are brands like AirBnB and Nike, can get away with these visually stunning hero sections with 4k videos and slide shows of athletes in shoes. At the time of writing this, Nike and AirBnB have both done away with videos and sliders on their main site... take a note from the big winners... don't do videos or sliders... ever.

Defining
Building
Blocks

We'll go through section by section of your website and build out each one using competitors and our industry knowledge.
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Once we have all the pieces, we'll organize them to best fit your business and convey the story that's best told to your customers.

Prefare press bar: #1 local meal delivery service in Denver

We dive into your customer reviews and testimonials to find which features matter most to your customers.

With prefare we found the local, Denver company, appealed to their customers. We moved the social proof section directly below the hero section:

Speed
Matters
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Everyone has performance issues, it's not just your business.

Check another one (18 seconds to interact!):

PageSpeed score improved from 27 to 97 on iPad screens

We minimize images, css, html, cache content and know how to build flat, responsive, converting websites.

This was the same site, same offer, same everything. 2.1x increase on leads.

Measure
with
Metrics

Metrics are great but only work when you're tracking them ;)

Engagement chart showing the first engagement spike after launch

Mixpanel analytics chart of conversion events

We'll fix your Google Analytics setup and configure any custom conversions that are necessary to understand how your business functions. We also bring in mixpanel or other tracking tools as needed.

Numbers
Don't
Lie

Jumping back to our prefare example,
this is where we ended:

We'll re-run all the analytics at the end and check-in 30 days out to make sure everything is operating smoothly. Typically we see a 12% reduced bounce rate and 11.2% -15% increase in conversions.

Four iPads showing PageSpeed results and device backs