Site Directory Redesign
Introducing diverse study categories for enhanced navigation and business partnerships
Overview
Client
The SchoolFinder Group is a Canadian information and resource provider for students and educational professionals, listing schools and programs information, careers, events and scholarships.
Industry:
EdTech
My role:
UX Designer
Timeline:
3 Months
Tools
Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar, Figma
Team
I collaborated with the CEO, CTO, marketing and content teams.
Problem
“Schools page”, a key page on the site, showed low KPIs, potentially limiting new partnerships with educational institutes.
Solution
I revamped the UI and restructured the school directory page with new diverse study categories, making navigation and exploration easier for users and potential clients.
View it here.
RESULT & IMPACT
My Process
How it started
The SchoolFinder Group is a leading provider of information and marketing solutions for students and educational professionals in Canada.
The current project started with updating the information architecture and layout of the Schools page.
Why?
Analyzing users’ behaviour using Google Analytics data showed that this page is among the top 3 pages visited on the site, but suffers high exit and bounce rates; meaning lost opportunities.
Goal
We aimed to increase user engagement and lead generation with a new page design.
To better understand the problem and the users’ pain points, I conducted qualitative and quantitative research along with a user experience audit of the current design.
Contextual inquiry at educational fairs
International users’ confusion about Canadian education system
An important subgroup of our users are international students living outside of Canada. Remote user testing revealed they didn’t fully understand the Canadian education system.
UX audit
Inconsistent and overlapping categories
The school categories are inconsistent, overlapping and not universally understandable, leading to a disorganization that reduces information findability.
Ineffective & irrelevant visuals
Brainstorm to simplify
Working closely with the team, I engaged in brainstorming sessions and idea exploration, resulting in the generation of several innovative proposals.
Exploration encouragement: Highlighted key school attributes guide users to the next step.
Navigation and browsing facilitation: Hierarchical school categories ease information discovery.
Enabling efficient decision-making: Interactive maps boost engagement and streamline school location and attribute comparisons.
Options to control and personalize: A detailed overview of available options helps users grasp the breadth and depth of offerings.
Task Flow
Before making any changes to the page, we needed to decide on the destination of the links on the new page. The current links directed users to a search results page that suffered from two main issues:
- Unclear next steps and insufficient information on search results page.
- Inefficient search refine feature that lacks helpful options and a user-friendly interface.
Existing path
Task: Finding an undergraduate physiotherapy program
A shortcut
To address these navigation challenges, we decided to redirect the users to another page: The “Programs search results” page which offers similar results with more useful information and necessary filtering options.
Redesigned path
Task: Finding an undergraduate physiotherapy program
Dancing around constraints: Designing within limits
Major alterations to the page were unfeasible due to:
- Project timeline constraints
- Interconnectedness with multiple teams
- Resource and budget limitations for necessary database level changes
Iteration
Taking into account the feedback and feasibility analysis, I opted to focus on the following:
- Strategically highlighting the wide range of schools through categories and sub-categories
- Revamping the user interface design and hierarchy of content
Final Design
Before
After
Results speak louder: Impact of the new design on KPIs
Updated categories, highlighted trending schools and a fresh and hierarchical UI positively affected our success metrics.
We observed an increased engagement rate and information request quantity, and lower bounce and exit rates in 4 weeks.
Afterthoughts
The interconnected nature of the metrics ecosystem
This project emphasized the importance of measuring direct metrics along with indirect ones. Moving forward, I’ll prioritize a holistic approach to design, continuously monitoring user feedback and analytics to ensure a balanced and useful user experience.
In a perfect world…!
The launched design had to follow the brand identity and existing visual patterns. If there were no constraints, I would have designed it in a way that would please my designer eye! Here’s an example:
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