Uprise Partners is a technology company merging managed services, software engineering, and digital marketing for companies to help them scale and grow. The challenge of this project was creating a website that educates prospective clients about the services offered, given how varied the different services are.
I was the sole designer and led the design project from Information Architecture to final QA, managed the timeline, and engaged with all stakeholders. Activities: Research, UX/UI Design, User Interviews, Journey Maps, Competitive Analysis, User Personas, Wireframes, Digital Prototypes, Information Architecture, Branding (Color Palette, Graphics, Fonts)
Once I had established the site's information architecture, I laid out the journey map to determine what visitors would experience when they visited the website. This wireframe displays a minimalist homepage with an engaging video of nature and science to capture visitors' attention and two CTAs - one for business owners who want to build their company and one for business owners that want to optimize their business.
The goal of this website was to streamline away from the list of all the services offered as they can be overwhelming and confusing for some visitors, especially people who may not know exactly their business needs. The two CTAs bring users to two different pages, where the list of services is broken into case studies so that users can learn more about exactly how Uprise can help based on previous clients.
Understanding that I had many stakeholders, we went through several rounds of feedback and testing with the internal team. Since I was breaking the services into a structure different from traditional layouts, I wanted to get as much feedback as possible through usability tests and interviews for these prototypes.
This digital prototype, created in Adobe XD, allowed team members a view of the potential site and how the navigation would work. It was beneficial to ensure that I was on the right track in my design process and that we were all on the same page.
Seeing if the new site accomplished the preset goals was a less linear process as the site itself went live without external testing. Once the site was live, the sales team collected all feedback from prospective and current clients and sent it back to me. The site itself evolved as more content became available, while at the same time, I was collecting feedback on the site to create longer-term goals for its next update.
This project was one of the most rapid design projects I had been a part of and required daily update meetings to make sure the design direction and messaging were consistent. Overall, I think my design process and execution were able to transition a website that had too many services listed to a homepage that caught the attention of business owners.
However, over time it became apparent the new direction was too confusing for many people. While the usability testing did well with high-tech leaders who could separate themselves from the exact day-to-day activities and services they needed, smaller business owners were off-put by not knowing exactly the services we offered. To make it more clear, the CTAs should be separated into three instead of two: Managed Services, Software Engineering, and Digital Marketing. While still a list of services, these categories are easier to digest and help entrepreneurs and leaders better understand the services we offer without listing every activity.
Once this project was complete, I updated this site with new information and designed the graphics for the uprisems.com as well as the blog Partner Program page as a pillar page for this website and managed service offerings. With the assistance of the rest of the marketing team, we were able to increase traffic to the website by 40%.
Understanding context is a very important part of any design project and during usability testing, the focus was too much on leadership in technology. This is a Maine-based company and the business leaders in local communities needed help in basic technology and business management.
Educating business leaders became a core part of the messaging I suggested structuring the blog toward that audience after reviewing the website and social media analytics collected over time. At the same time, we had built a Managed Services site that was competing with the main website traffic. To ensure those efforts were efficient, I suggested we focus all marketing efforts back on the Uprise website so that visitors could see all the services we offered before getting to just one of the focuses.
At the end of the day, context and goals are the most important driving factors of any project, and keeping everyone on board and on the same page for those two factors is one of the most important parts of what I do.
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