Optimized Landing Page for Transatlantic Expansion

Designing a measurable and flexible landing page to target an Australian audience.

Foreword

As an intensive 1 week experience working a cross disciplinary team, this project was an invaluable lesson on flexible design frameworks that could be easily understood by people without design backgrounds. Working closely with Arepa’s digital marketing team, I quickly learnt that design lacking rationale or considered structure was a detriment to both end user as well as the people responsible for testing and modifying the design going forward. I feel extremely grateful for the opportunity to develop my understanding of how design can serve both users and the team maintaining or building the design.

The Context

New Zealand nootropic company Arepa are expanding to the Australian market. The original landing page was not driving expected sales but the digital marketing team had no design variables to test their marketing hypotheses.

The Challenge

Redesign the Arepa landing page to target sale of sample pack units in the Australian market while also allowing for measurable data to be collected on best performance design via Google Analytics and Facebook Business Manager.

Why is it a Problem?

The Arepa team wanted to explore redesigning the existing landing page but also wanted metrics to help decide which design to use going forward. The current landing page design:

1. Lacks design intent - It is difficult to identify variables and intent of the design in order to test marketing hypothesis and make justified improvements.

2. Did not consider the target Australian audience.

The Outcome

N.B. This project is still ongoing in the testing and validation phase.

The Process

To meet the one week deadline, I decided to simplify the design thinking process into three phases: Research, Design and Test. As the sole UX designer for the project, I was in charge of researching and designing the proposed solution framework which the Arepa digital marketing team then modified and tested via Google Analytics and Facebook Business Manager. We conducted daily standups to maintain open communication of output and any changing requirements.

Research

Phase Objective: Starting from an existing landing page that was not meeting expected sales targets, I wanted to dissect and understand the current design as well as the Arepa brand before launching into redesign ideation. While stylistically consistent with the main ecommerce website, the landing page design lacked clear design intent. This research stage was a productive time to clarify the design logic and purpose of the page with the Arepa team.

Research Methodologies: Existing Site Audit, Competitor Analysis, Proto Personas.

A site audit on the existing landing page was used to identify what worked and didn’t seem to work while also clarifying the content elements required for future redesigns. Working with the Arepa digital marketing team, this was a productive session to clarify the benefits, features and products of the brand while also identifying what exactly the team was struggling with currently regarding marketing hypotheses.

Key Insights

• The current design features a lot of good information but could be simplified for impact;
• The current design is stylistically consistent with the main ecommerce webpage but could feature less text and more icons and imagery;
• The digital marketing team struggled to understand the current design’s logic and structure of information;
• Because they didn’t understand the design logic, the digital marketing team struggled to modify the current design for AB testing;
• We identified that the users of the landing page design is not only potential Australian customers but Arepa’s digital marketing team who intend to test and improve the landing page according to customer reactions to the design.

I also conducted competitor analysis of landing pages for similar brands and products to gain insights on content customers could expect. The brands that I decided to audit were either local blackcurrant drinks or local / international nootropic products.

Key Insights

• Arepa sits in a unique space between blackcurrant drinks and nootropic products - there isn’t a competitor that does exactly what they do;
• Nootropic brands tend to highlight performance benefits of their products while NZ blackcurrant brands focus on locally sourced, natural ingredients;
• Being a science backed product with 100% natural ingredients, performance benefits as well as a gathered directory of reviews from satisfied New Zealand customers makes Arepa stand out from their competitors and needs to be highlighted.

Finally, proto personas were formed based on existing data of Arepa’s current Australian customer base gathered by Google Analytics and Facebook Business Manager to help the digital marketing team better empathize with target customers as they conducted testing and validation.

Key Insights

• Current market is males 25-34 and 65 + with interest in Food & Dining, Real Estate and Arts & Entertainment;
• Working the the digital marketing team, we were able to identify three target personas - ‘The Athlete’, ‘The Working Professional’ and ‘The Health Conscious Individual’.

Design

Phase Objective: Explore digital solutions for solving user stories while also communicating the proposed design logic and intent to the Arepa team.

Research Methodologies: Information Architecture, Hifi Wireframes

A proposed information architecture was important to establish before any wireframe ideation. Summarising the key content from the original landing page and taking into consideration the content that would make Arepa stand out from competitors, I grouped the information into four sections. I then presented the proposed information architecture to the Arepa team for feedback.

Feedback from the Arepa Team

• The hierarchy of content was clearly understood;
• The team wondered how possible it would be to modify the hierarchy of content in the wireframes going forward.

Wireframes were explored with three variations of one framework to show how flexible the design could be for future AB testing and modification.

Feedback from the Arepa Team

• There was a better understanding of how the design framework would be modified going forward;
• The digital marketing team referred to the ‘sections’ as ‘modules’;
• The digital marketing team appreciated the ability for modules to correlate to variables that could be tested in the market.

Test

Phase Objective: From this point, the digital marketing team took the proposed design framework and conducted AB testing in the Australian market. This phase is still ongoing.

Research Methodologies: Google Analytics, Facebook Business Manager

Reflections

It was only after working closely with Arepa’s digital marketing team that I was able to understand the importance of communicating design logic to less design orientated departments in a company while allowing this design to be responsive and measurable to better meet business goals.

While intensive and short, this project opened my eyes to the ability for design to cater responsiveness to customer metrics. By crafting a considered information architecture and hierarchy of content, I was able to propose a modular solution that enabled the digital marketing team at Arepa to better identify design variables which they could test according to marketing hypotheses. The modular aspect of the proposed solution was important both from a data analytics point of view but also for later changes that needed to be added or revised in the latest version of the landing page according to insights gathered from testing. These later changes could be made without my help due to the simple modularity of content sections.

For future considerations, this project would benefit from usability testing on the proposed wireframes before launching to the market for business validation. However, given the tight schedule, the Arepa team found the outcome satisfactory.