Living Future Institute Australia (LFIA)
Helping LFIA redesign their website to increase conversion rates
A non-profit organisation committed to creating communities that are socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative. They have a goal to create a world of living buildings through regenerative design, a philosophy beyond sustainability.
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LFIA wants to connect with globally-minded people and organisations committed to improving their built environment and run programs to support people who want to be a part of creating a living future.
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Role: Research & UX/UI Timeline: 3 weeks
Building Awareness to help LFIA increase conversion rates
LFIA has asked a team of two UX consultants to help them redesign their website to reflect their brand and simplify the way content is presented.
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In order to acquire and retain members and increase engagement, the client saw the website as the most important tool to increase conversion rate as users end up on the website to learn more about the business and ultimately become a part of it.
HYPOTHESIS
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By focusing on content, membership, and events, how can we help our audience understand LFIA and get people to become more actively involved
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WHY?
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LFIA has the vision to create a standard beyond sustainability, to revolutionise the built environment with regenerative design. As an affiliate of the international company, LFIA works to support this movement and provide opportunities for connection to their programs in Australia.
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LFIA’s work aspires to challenge current norms and create a better living future, this concept is still very new in Australia and requires a solution to better explain what they do for the community.
We started the project with research to really understand LFIA and their stakeholders
Heuristic Evaluation | Secondary Research | Primary Research
We conducted 8 usability test on the current website and collated our data in Miro
We prepared a list of interview questions and a set of simple tasks for the users to complete:
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From the homepage is the content easy to understand
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Find out more information on the Living Building Challenge
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What are your thoughts on the event page?
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How would you subscribe to LFIA's newsletter?
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Is the membership sign up process clear?
From analysing our findings, we found that our users were frustrated and left with more questions after visiting LFIA's website
"Wonder what they mean by regenerative design?"
"Is the Living Building Challenge a competition?"
"How does someone go on the website get involved with the programs"
"Not 100% sure what I'm getting as a member"
Personas Built From Data
The Impactful Worker
A professional already working in the industry and is looking to become a member. Cares about climate change, wants to get involved and drive change for future generations.
The Learner
Has a thirst for knowledge, is socially aware and wants to connect with like-minded individuals. Loves to attend events and hear success stories that inspire them to act.
Insights to what our users were
struggling to understand
Using affinity mapping, we converged as a team and discovered the following insights.
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Through data analysis and synthesis we gained valuable insights into what they did and did not understand.
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We were able to see where our users got stuck and used that information to create a more user-friendly experience.
Content and definitions are not clear
How does the Living Building Challenge fit in to the big picture?
Member benefits were not obvious
People were interested in upcoming events
No transparency on donations
Too many steps to newsletter sign up
Optimising business opportunities through the
understanding of user experience and expectations
I created a journey map to visualise our findings to take the client on the same journey and effectively highlight our user's overall experience. How the user's goals and pain points can turn into business opportunities.
Determining MVP
From understanding what the underlying pain points and opportunities were. We worked closely with the client, who would be implementing the changes herself, to plot what was considered high value with lower effort to validate and align our direction before we begin designing the solution.
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We agreed on focusing on content, definition and members page would bring the highest value with minimum effort. Events were considered low value as due to covid they were unable to plan and hold workshops.
Business Opportunities
Leveraging International Site Content
Images and copy that can be used across sites
Power of Network
Connecting people through membership, events and social media
Testimonials & Case Studies
Showing success through examples
Simplification of Sign Up
Addressing the pain points along the path to sign up
Information Architecture
The overall website had an aesthetic and minimalist design, finding relevant information was easy to navigate. However, the content and definitions were difficult to understand for someone who has never been on their site.
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TOP NAVIGATION
The top navigation was expanded to include ways for users to 'Get Involved', find 'Events & Education' and ways to 'Contact' LFIA.
The Call to Action 'Donate' button was replaced with 'Become a Member' to voice what the business and users really wanted to see and become a part of, by creating an authentic call to action we are able to build a realistic model of what future patterns look like and grow LFIA's brand.
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ACQUIRING NEW MEMBERS
The membership page was confusing as to why the Impactful Worker should sign up, what were the benefits and why there are different types of membership. We updated the members' benefits to visually explain why users should become a member and displayed the different types of membership clearly.
We streamlined the sign-up process and clearly explained why the Impactful Worker should become a member. By creating individual pages we directed our users to select their chosen membership type and created a faster process for members renewing.
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FOOTER
Users have access to the main navigation without scrolling back to the top. We included the 'Donate' button in the footer as users wanted to learn more about LFIA before donating.
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Another new edition to the footer is the 'Subscribe' button that links to the newsletter sign up. Through our usability tests, users could not easily locate how to subscribe, and the first place they looked was the footer.
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Solution for the Impactful Worker
Content & Definition
Understanding LFIA & Building knowledge
Programs
How they could get involved & impact the future
Enquiry Form
Get in touch easily
Streamlined Membership
Effective process
Newsletter Subscription
Fast & easy access
Events Page
Building connections
The Power of Feedback
We conducted 4 usability tests to gather feedback on our design solution and find out if users understand the content better.
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There was positive feedback that helped us validate our design and some key areas of improvement including:
- Creating a new home page
- Adding a programs page
- Adding FAQ section to LBC page
- Updating membership page
- Simplifying contacts page
We had the time to make refinements before handing over our design prototype and final recommendations.
Future Roadmap
We understood some of the features suggested will need more work from the client and recommended the following:
Testimonial
Understanding your stakeholders
Case Studies
Showcase your programs
Create FAQ
Answer common questions from users
Hold more events
Increase awareness
Key Learnings
Working closely with client
This project has taught me the importance of working closely with clients, not just the person involved but getting the whole team involved at every stage of the design process.
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Being able to communicate clearly and checking in with everyone made things run more smooth and effectively.
Focusing on the MVP
MVP is not perfect by default but working towards perfection. We had to prioritise what could be done and talk to the client and understand what was important to them and find the opportunities between business goals and user needs.
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To be able to continually test, build rapidly and launch allows the site to fail fast, if no one wants what the website offers, the client can learn this without spending a fortune and guessing what people will respond to.
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Stay objective
To be able to stay objective and align with my project goals at all times was one of the challenges I faced as our personal preferences are so innate to our decision-making process.
I understood that I was not the user and my preference weighted little unless my design was made solely for myself. When providing feedback, I learnt that it was important to focus on what the Impactful worker will like and what would make their lives easier.
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