Impact Networking is a U.S.-based company that provides several services to its clients: managed IT, cybersecurity, marketing, print services and digital transformation. Impact uses a consultative approach to assess and develop a strategic plan that is tailored to each individual client’s needs and goals.

High-Level Design Objective: Redesign Impact’s blog to solve frustrations and increase engagement and email subscriptions

My role:

Duration: 7 weeks

The problem area

Impact Networking's corporate team first reached out because they wanted to redesign the company's Insights section, which housed a multitude of blogs, case studies, videos, webinars and various other content types.

Their overall goal was to position themselves as a thought-leader in the industry and to provide more value to customers and prospects through their Insights, helping nurture leads and increase conversions.

The problem is people were currently spending less than a few seconds on Insights before quickly leaving the page. Our goal, then, was to understand the current problems prospects had, and design Insights in a way that increased engagement and email subscriptions.

Our audience

Our audience consisted of large business owners who had a specific service in mind (i.e. marketing, IT, cybersecurity) and specific goals they wanted to achieve (i.e. enhance security, increase sales, digitize their process) by partnering with Impact.

They were looking for a long-term partner that could help them grow their business and profits, and they spent a significant amount in the consideration phase. They were looking for a company that was an expert in their respective fields and could provide guidance and direction to reach their goals.

Although the company knew that a consultative and comprehensive approach would deliver the most value to customers by tailoring the services they needed to reach their goals, we wanted to make sure the Insights page best captured what our audience was looking for now. And then, once the prospect subscribed or reached out, the company could provide more information and value.

Understanding user frustrations

The corporate team had gathered research regarding user feedback that was very helpful for us. To get started, many people felt frustrated that the Resources page was taking longer than normal to load, and they overall felt it was too unappealing. "It all just looks the same", one participated told us. They didn't know what to look at first when scrolling down the page, which was resulting in a very low number of people even clicking and reading the blogs.

“It all just looks the same.”

Aligning on blog content

Another important part of the process was speaking to the corporate team about the actual content that would be featured. Although my team was tasked to work on the design of the page, while the corporate team spearheaded the content, we wanted to make sure that there was alignment between the teams to make sure we were presenting content that aligned closely with our goal: providing as much value as possible to prospects.

Their team had already devised a marketing plan and strategy that would be based on the most important questions and information that our prospects were looking for, like SEO keywords and mind maps.

Our focus was then on designing the Insights page to be centered around our prospects' needs and goals and what was most important to them.

Our solution

We then decided to have specific sections for each service that would make the page more easily scannable and someone could scroll to find the section that was of most value to them to get them started.

We knew based on research and feedback, that the current Insights page looked ‘the same’; it was unappealing and uninviting for our users. So, for our new solution we wanted to create something that was much more dynamic as well as easy to read and scan to find what they were looking for / most interested in.

We also knew that our customers were coming to our site with a specific service or specific goal(s) in mind, so we focused on centering the content around the different services and goals available that Impact could help them with.

I then started sketching possible ways in which we could redesign the Insights page to center around our user needs and goals, while removing frustrations.

A customer-centered website

Once we landed on a final design that best address our users, I created low fidelity wireframes to present to the Impact corporate team, so I could walk them through the vision and what it would require from their team in the long-term (ex: what information would need to be sourced and what information they would need to update vs what information would be automatically pulled).

We went also went over proposed new changes and how the new Insights page and blogs would work to make sure it was a feasible solution for all teams. Since the corporate team works with every department across the company when crafting content, it was essential that everyone was aligned.

Presenting low-fidelity wireframes

Once we landed on a final design that best address our users, I created low fidelity wireframes to present to the Impact corporate team, so I could walk them through the vision and what it would require from their team in the long-term (ex: what information would need to be sourced and what information they would need to update vs what information would be automatically pulled).

We went also went over proposed new changes and how the new Insights page and blogs would work to make sure it was a feasible solution for all teams. Since the corporate team works with every department across the company when crafting content, it was essential that everyone was aligned.

Presenting the new Insights page

I also worked with our developers to ensure loading speed improved drastically.

Dynamicness. We added sections, headings, eyebrows to increase readibility and scannability.

Browse Featured Posts to Keep Up With Today’s Business Landscape

Here will go information about being able to browse and learn more about modern digital world and we are showing the most relevant and popular posts to drive users to want to click on it, these are selected by the corporate team and the departments within allstate.

We included a featured posts section at the top that showed posts that the corporate team had curated based on what was most important / trending the most and what our customers prospects were coming to us most for help with.

Instead of showing all blogs all at once, we created pathways for users to explore content that is most valuable and useful to them. We also made sure that they layout was more dynamic by adding different sections that would help combat the “sameness”.

Check Out Trending Topics

We added a 'Explore Trending Topics' to include even further distilled topics that were currently all the rage and goals

Business Impact

This project was a true testament to how important human-centered design is. Working with a platform

Reflection

This project was a true testament to how important human-centered design is. Working with a platform that had a high degree of complexity helped me see the frustration that products like these can have on a group of people, and how they can hinder their work. 

I also enjoyed the challenge of designing without changing things too much because I did not want to add a steep learning curve for employees. I wanted to create something that helped them achieve their goal (a quick and accurate grant confirmation) but was not a far departure from what they were used to seeing and working with.

HERE TALK ABOUT INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF EVERYTHING — ALL TEAMS WITHIN THE COMPANY ALIGNMENT, MAKING SURE ALL ON BOARD

ACCOUNTING FOR EVERY SINGLE TEAM’S FEEDBACK AND REQUIREMENTS – THEY WOULD WORK WITHIN IT EVERY DAY