Case Study
Website redesign for JoinIN a social networking website
Project Summary
JoinIN was looking for a redesign of three of their existing pages, We focused our attention on a target market they were getting great organic traction from, but not paying enough attention to; Universities. USC and Pepperdine wanted a platform to facilitate project collaboration between students, faculty, and alumni.
The platform now has a white label architecture allowing different user groups such as universities, businesses, entrepreneurs, and political campaigns to utilize it. Shifting JoinIN away from a ticket sales business model towards a subscription based model with minimal targeted advertising will help them foster growth while having curated content.
Context
JoinIN is a collaboration platform that integrates the online and offline experience to increase and enhance professional success. Imagine a cross between Trello, Quora, and Meetup in one platform.
Project Brief
JoinIN is a social entrepreneurship site experiencing usability problems. They are looking for site design changes and site language modifications to the profile page, create page, and landing page.
The Problem
Addressing the KPI’s of user growth, bounce rate, and user engagement, we uncovered a potential for resolving these issues long term for their business through a series of design changes aimed at a subscription client. By focusing on subscribing institutions, and meeting the needs of the organic new user through feature prioritization, JoinIN can cement a paying user base and create market visibility through a white label platform and attract the new user secondarily.
The Team
During this sprint, I played the role of UI Designer. I also took part in other aspects of our design process such as research, ideation, medium fidelity design for guerrilla testing, final prototype design, and user testing.
Research
Understanding what Google analytics was telling us about the current website allowed us to see where we needed to improve.
Referral | 41% of total traffic | 35% bounce rate
Direct | 39% of total traffic | 49% bounce rate
Organic Search | 20% of total traffic | 58% bounce rate
Above: Collecting all of the data analyzed through Google Analytics
Survey
Using JoinIN's platform we sent out a simple survey to all 300 members at the time
"I like the format and ability to connect easily. It supports synchronous and asynchronous communications."
Key take-aways:
Users would want the platform to be mobile optimized and have integration with Google Drive, all while keeping access to the existing events newsfeed.
Personas
Taking into consideration the new target market that JoinIN had developed traction with, the two personas we used for this iteration of the design were; the college and the student required to use it by the college.
Ideation
Since there was already interest in a white label architecture product for USC we decided to narrow our scope on this client to be able to better develop the needs of that specific user.
Wireframing
Early stage wire framing for USC white label mobile optimized website.
• The colors are used specifically to bring prominence to main features of collaboration.
• Icons with titles to make it easier to comprehend
The Solution
The platform now has a white label architecture allowing different user groups such as universities, businesses, entrepreneurs, and political campaigns to utilize it. Shifting JoinIN away from a ticket sales business model towards a subscription based model with minimal targeted advertising will help them foster growth while having curated content.
Tools Used
Next Steps
• v2 | video chat feature, design iteration, additional research & user testing
• JoinIN branded version of white label platform for Entrepreneurs
• Potential Target Markets: Businesses & Political Campaigns
