Franchsing.com serves as the world's largest digital information site for franchising, with tens of thousands of original content pages listed. In 2018 our team decided to give the website a much-needed update.
Problem: Outdated website needed a complete redesign - function and aesthetic.
Length: 6+ months
Role: As Creative Manager I led the redesign effort by gathering user and stakeholder feedback, doing competitive analysis, research, creating wireframes and hi-fidelity mockups, leading creative reviews, and working with the web developer on design implementation.
Challenges
There were two main challenges with this project. The first was determining the site content organization (information architecture), and the second was giving this hand-coded website a modern look.
1) Information Architecture - This particular website is so robust with content it quickly became evident that the site organization would be the longest and most difficult challenge. We worked with all relevant stakeholders, executives, and SME's to determine what content would be visible on the main Navigation, what would be hidden within the hamburger menu, and the hierarchy of how that information would be displayed.
2) Visual Update - This website has been in existence for over 15+ years; created and maintained by the same webmaster to this date. His custom code and archiving system was a major barrier to successfully updating the site. It took many proposed design layouts before we were able to find the right direction given the constraints and timeline.
The resulting website based on my design was built on a flexible 8-pt grid system to allow easy and quick updates and/or rearranging of content.
Results
Prior to the update, there was only space for one banner ad to be displayed on the homepage, which rotated slowly among the sponsors. We had been seeing a steady decline in digital sponsorships, which we felt was due to the lack of visibility of their ads. In the redesign, we increased the number of visible ad banners and also increased the speed at which they rotate. Within the first 30 days of our redesign launch, our homepage sponsors increased by 200%.
Another very important result of the redesign was a responsive mobile experience. The old design was clunky and not user-friendly via mobile. The new design included the hamburger drop-down menu, and a clearer, easier-to-navigate layout. As a result, we saw a 30% increase in time spent on our site by mobile users within the first 30 days. Overall, time spent on the site increased on both desktop and mobile but mobile saw the largest increase in time spent.
Learning
This project ended up being a tedious process, but in the end, was gratifying to see through to completion.
I learned a lot about working on information architecture and how technical constraints can limit your design options. In addition, working with stakeholders and SME's is another challenge in itself.
The sales department wanted larger ads. Our Chief Content Officer wanted a navigation layout that wasn't user friendly. The CEO pushed for a design that mimicked another well-known website (our direct competitor) that had its own set of usability issues. Our Chief Technology Officer pushed back on every change due to the technical challenges.
In the end, our design team was able to convince the executive team that our users were the most important consideration. Franchise Update Media now has a user-friendly, mobile responsive website that functions well for editorial, marketing and sales.
