Website Redesign
Daewon Advisory
Daewon Advisory is a boutique HR advisory providing Gulf clients with unique, tailored executive training & leadership programs. Since Daewon's inception in 2011, its vision, target audience, and strategy had changed drastically. Moreover, the website infrastructure lacked logical information organization and user-friendly design. During my role as manager at Daewon, I spearheaded the task of completely redesigning our website as well as our brand identity. We (myself, an associate, and varying interns) started the process by analyzing our website to determine its shortcomings.
Role /
Project Lead
Tasks /
Project Scope & Planning, User Interviews, Site Architecture, Visual Branding & Design
Tools /
Wix, Pen & Paper
Year /
2016
 Landing Page |  Main Page |  Program Description |
|---|---|---|
 About Us |  Recent Activities |
Being a small company, branding and design for all our materials (online and print) fell under our marketing team's parameters.
The project began when we figured out that the original website was presenting some roadblocks for clients who were trying to find out more about our services online.
Strategy
Process is Everything
1. Discover
Identify pain points
2. Study
Conduct user research
3. Explore
Engage in competitive analysis
4. Execute
Rebranding & redesigning
5. Test
Listen & respond
1. Discover
The first major problem we identified was the lack of user-centered design in both information architecture (IA) and user interface (UI).
"In terms of UI, the colors, fonts, and layout reflected outdated trends in web design, lacking professional polish and decreasing the credibility of the company. As for IA, the site acted more as an archive for the company's past accomplishments than as an approachable resource for future clients."
2. Study
Due to constraints in time, resources and support, we took advantage of the following research methods:
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Field observations, user interviews, and contextual inquiry (made possible through monthly client meetings)
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Educated guesses based on internal feedback from client-facing employees
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Analytics of existing users available through newsletter tracking services
A summary of our observations based on this research concluded in the following points of importance:
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Exploration of and decision-making leading up to attending courses (Daewon's highest source of revenue) was formerly a senior-level decision, but was becoming increasingly delegated to more mid-level and even junior employees (shift in target's age demographic)
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Our clients, especially the target X-generation, are often not in their office during work hours due to meetings, field work, etc. They are avid users of smartphones and more than 50% of our observed users accessed their work emails through mobile devices.
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They are not used to complicated navigation or dense, lengthy content. A 'less is more' approach always proved more successful, with the key message distilled.
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Our clients preferred to see rather than read. For example, photos with our more distinguished alumni (labeled) often proved more effective in gaining attention than showing a list of previous participants' names.
"This information led us to design a mobile-friendly website utilizing photos with significance and no unnecessary text. User flow throughout the site, as well as interactive features (registering for courses, requesting more information, etc) needed to be intuitive and easy."
3. Explore
The next step was to identify pioneers in the field to set a standard for the redesign. We looked at institutions or companies that provide similar products/services and benchmarked all aspects of their sites, but specifically noted their information architecture, interface design, and user friendliness.
We used up many walls with mind maps, paper wireframes, and branding systems, but have been intentionally omitted.
Our top references included Harvard Executive Education, London Business School, and McKinsey & Company. We also referred to several ad agency websites for their branding and design decisions. Our team benefited greatly from this stage as sharing concrete examples of existing websites gave us a shared visual language to work with. We also gained a better understanding of the general IA that works for companies providing services similar to ours.
4. Execute
We started mapping out the new site with discussions about which aspects of the old website meet the needs of clients (ex. upcoming programs, testimonials from previous participants, search function for diverse programs, etc) and which needed to go (ex. archives of brochures, archives of photos, and any detailed information dating back to more than 3 years). We ended up throwing out more than half of the current content and completely redesigned the navigation.
Next, we used paper models to wireframe the pages. Due to time constraints, we dealt simultaneously with the visual branding (color palette, font pairings, image placements, etc). Some decisions we had agreed upon earlier were abandoned once we prototyped low-fidelity mock-ups, and other ideas sprang up simply from the process of editing.
Our most important revisions included:
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Making all pages mobile-friendly, with easily digestible chunks of text
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Moving the contact form to the first page, and having multiple links leading to it (clients can contact us, ask questions, and request more information through this form)
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Brighter, younger color palette and fonts
5. Test
We recruited some of our closest clients to provide feedback, and caught immediate navigation features that were not working as intended. I would have loved for our team to have further explored this aspect, but the nature of our company and work did not allow for additional time and resources to be allocated to improving the site continuously.
Results
Metrics Matter
"Interactions with clients increased 600%, a measurable and significant impact that impressed management."
We received feedback that the categorization of courses by subject and level and the easily accessible contact form were great improvements. The new form also had clients submit any inquiries with their information so that we could contact them directly, which provided us with the chance to directly pitch different solutions according to their needs.
An additional, unexpected perk was that our HR team enjoyed a higher number of applicants who conveyed that one of their main reasons for applying was because of our website. Our brand identity stood out from other Korean companies as younger, more globalized and innovative.
Redesigning a corporate website with a team of 2 people was challenging and stressful to say the least, but it provided a creative outlet for us and eased several pain points in my work process in marketing. Given that we worked on this project as an aside, we were immensely proud of our final product and the way it improved our customers' online experience with Daewon.
