After my initial project scope meeting with Evermentor founder Mathew Stewart it became clear what issues he was facing with the existing website. Based off insights from our initial meeting and from conducting my own UX analysis on the website I was able to flesh out business goals and problem statements that needed to be addressed in the final design.
• Increase customer conversion rate upon arriving on website (landing page) from Facebook advertising
• Build Evermentor brand recognition, awareness, and credibility
• Build customer loyalty (referrals, reviews, re-peat customer purchases)
• Website wasn’t optimized for customer conversion. ex. no CTA funnel directed at account registration
• Website wasn’t promoting Evermentor features and value (ex. courses offered, mentorship and community benefits, training info etc.)
Evermentor’s main competitor is Udacity. Although there are countless e-learning platforms (ex. Udemy, Skillshare, Coursera, etc.), the vast majority offer courses that are below 10 hours of course content. They are cheap, not very comprehensive courses for people looking to learn part time. Udacity on the other hand (and what Evermentor is striving to be) offers courses with incredible comprehensiveness with courses going beyond 30+ hours and consequently priced much higher.
Udacity design takeaways:
• Highlight all key features and value offered on home page (ex. technical mentor support, personal career coach and services, etc.)
• Build a strong correlation from courses taken and career paths opened
• Prompt user engagement through CTAs and course offering funnels
• Optimize website for course browsing. Do not present any impediments in browsing user experience
While designing for Evermentor I had to keep in mind both client goals (Evermentor — mentioned above) as well as user goals (targeted consumer). I had to tie these two together to craft one unified design experience. Evermentor founder Mathew Stewart has an impressive background in digital marketing, and handled all marketing efforts. He was able to provide me with Facebook Analytics on the ads he had run to see which users our ads were resonating with the best.
Based off our own personal trial and error marketing campaigns and through market research I was able to build out this user persona.
As part of the design process we went through two different design iterations. We ended up going with the second one after receiving insights off A/B Testing. I will cover this under “Testing” in the next section.
The first step to implementing a new design for Evermentor was to completely revamp their brand identity. This was imperative to the overall design and success of Evermentor as a business.
Mood
Innovative. Sleek. Clean. Professional. Inspiring. Ambitious
Colours
I chose the colour orange as the primary colour as orange evokes excitement, enthusiasm, adventure, freedom and a sense of warmth. This is exactly what I wanted the Evermentor brand to convey. Evermentor is not just an e-leaning platform promoting courses to students, it is promoting a new business or career, a new vision, a new dream, a new life. It is only fitting that I chose a colour that evokes excitement to match Evermentor’s core values and beliefs. I went with a dark blue to provide contrast and allow the orange to stand out. The dark blue and orange were also very complimentary towards one another. Finally I chose dark blue to convey the feeling of professionalism and credibility, two feelings associated with blue.
Typography
As part of the design process we went through two different design iterations. Here was my first initial website design for Evermentor:
Here was the testing breakdown:
Resource Used: Optimizely
Testing Goal: Uncover which of the two website designs, after user arrives from Facebook Ad, will yield a greater customer conversion rate (account registration through CTA funnel)
We ended up going with the second design as it proved to yield a higher conversion rate. In both of our opinions it was also a better designed website from a UI side of things as well.
Overall it was a great experience working at Evermentor as a freelance UI/UX Designer. For the first time in my design career I was able to dive into not only design but also the marketing side of things, working on landing pages and designing conversion funnels, really getting to understand how design has a direct correlation to sales. I wish Evermentor all the best in it’s future endeavours and I look forward to watching it grow into the company of its dreams!
