Carole Gardens case study

Overview

Summary

Carole Gardens is a rapidly growing gardening business in Philadelphia that needed a way to reach new clients and set up initial consultations. Potential clients, in turn, needed a way to view the process and schedule a consultation on their timeline.

The previous version of the site was an early attempt of mine, had some major issues, and required a complete redesign.

Redesign

Carole Gardens' primary goals for the redesigned site were:

Improved user experience and flow
Heightened conversion rate
Clearer descriptions of services
Better highlighting of the product (more pictures of the work)
Increased trust in the process (more testimonials and thorough background of the business)
Less spam emails

To date, Carole Gardens has booked 40+ new clients through the site, ranging in scope from one-time designs to year-long, recurring contracts.

The goal is to double that number and increase efficiency through the following KPIs.

KPIs for the redesign:

Improved site traffic through SEO (current CTR is 22.7%)
Decreased initial meeting times by better informing clients on the scope of services
Improved average search position by targeting common queries (current average position is 23.2)
Reduced spam emails with the addition of reCAPTCHA and keyword filters

Previous design

Much of the initial research proved obsolete in light of real user feedback.

You can find the original case study here, which includes a link to the previous site.

User research

Summary

Initial user research included the usual suspects- personas, journey maps, etc.- but feedback from users of the live site was more enlightening, and sometimes surprising.

Pain points

Users expressed three major pain points in their experience with the site:

Confusion in the form
Confusion with the services provided
Too few examples of work

Confusion in the form

Users were confused by the old form which only allowed them to choose one option since they were listed as radio buttons. Current clients interested in more than one service mentioned that they were confused by this, and this friction may have caused others to abandon the form.

I replaced the radio style buttons with checkboxes, allowing users to select as many services as they were interested in.

Carole Gardens' contact form highlighting improved services selection.

Confusion with the services provided

The old site prioritized steps of service over what each service entailed. We believed that users would want an outline of the season, but interviews revealed they were more interested in what was included with each service.

Clients wanted to be better informed as to what was included with each service when they met with Carole Gardens for their initial consultation.

I laid out the services on cards, explaining what was included with each, allowing users to choose the services they were interested in- a la carte.

Carole Gardens website showing services and processes section.

Too few examples of work

Users wanted more examples of Carole Gardens' to aid their decision to request service.

More (and larger) images

In addition to a larger scrolling carousel of lightbox images, I added a Gallery page with images organized into Planter and Garden categories.

Before

After

New version of Carole Gardens website photo carousel.

Design

Wireframes

Starting with a blank slate, I envisioned the new site in terms of a traditional service provider, designing wires with faith that future imagery would provide the individual personality of the business.

The wireframes remained pretty true to the final design, though the services were ultimately streamlined and placed in cards on the homepage.

Midway through the design it became apparent that a services page was redundant. Instead, I added a gallery page with nearly 80 images that highlighted the business, organized into two categories: planters and gardens.

Mockups

Again, the final design remained pretty true to the mockups, with the exception of the services page being omitted in favor of more in-depth descriptions on the home page, and the addition of a gallery page.

The footer was replaced with a fixed background image to remain consistent with the rest of the site, and a few changes were made due to constraints in load time- most notably the slider on the homepage went from full screen to 1440px.

1440px was large enough to read as full screen on most laptops and, although the decision was driven by bandwidth considerations, ended up being more aesthetically pleasing on desktops as well.