Project Overview
Client
Jessica Ajoux and Perry DeWitt, recently dubbed as the “queens of agility”, are world-renowned dog agility champions and founded UnitedDog together. They are extremely sought-after trainers who offer private training sessions, group classes, seminars, and facility rentals for hundreds of dog agility students aspiring to eventually compete themselves.
The Team
Myself and another designer
My Role
Product Designer
Platform
Web & Mobile
The Problem
The owners of UnitedDog communicated through email to schedule training with students which was time consuming for both sides. They struggled to rent out their training facility since customers were often unaware they could do so. Lastly, our client asked us to freshen up the content of the website to reflect their reputation of being competitive trainers.
The Opportunity
By streamlining the scheduling process, revamping the content of the website, and reorganizing the information architecture, our clients and their students can finally spend more time on what they truly love doing: training.
Check it out!
See what we’ve built at uniteddogagility.com.
FINAL DELIVERABLE
Online scheduling and new content resulted in:
1. A drastic decrease in overall time spent on administrative tasks for our client.
2. A 100% reduction in time-on-task for users.
3. A 50% increase in class, private training, and facility rental sign-ups.
INITIAL ASSUMPTIONS & PROJECT CONSTRAINTS
Focus on just the users?!
At the beginning, we knew that like any other UX project we were going to focus on the users. While conducting our initial research, it became obvious that we could actually prioritize helping our clients, the owners of UnitedDog as well.
Squarespace
Our clients hosted their original website on Squarespace and liked the price, its simple content management system, and were familiar with the product. Our design capabilities were a bit limited, but not hindered enough to still build an efficient and beautiful website.
RESEARCH METHODS
46 survey participants
We wanted to get a sense of who our primary users were and to see how they used the original website.
6 follow-up interviews
Next, we interviewed 6 of our survey participants to truly get to know them and better understand their needs.
25 card sorting volunteers
It was important for us to know how our target users categorized the crucial information they wanted most.
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Survey
Students want to compete in dog agility.
Users were unaware they could rent the facility.
The website is primarily used to book classes, events, seminars, and private training.
Follow-up interviews
• Scheduling training/classes via email is tedious.
• Finding new events, classes, and seminars is difficult.
• Students felt empowered after training lessons.
— some interview gold
“Scheduling training with Jess and Perry is so tough! There’s always so many ‘back and forth’ emails to try and figure out the right date and time.”
— Debra F.
“I feel like I’m bouncing all over the entire website trying to figure out when all of the new upcoming events are happening.”
— Nancy B.
“I absolutely love training with Jessica and Perry. I’ve gained so much confidence as an agility coach and even as a person too!”
— Jeri P.
Card sorting
90% of participants similarly grouped the content from the original website into 6 new primary navigation links: Instruction, Events, Facility Rental, About, News, and Contact.
ORIGINAL WEBSITE PAIN POINTS
A homepage without enough direction
The primary users of the website are students with the same goal: to sign up for new events and instruction. There was no way of doing so on the original home page.
All aspects of business were conducted via email
Everything from scheduling private training sessions, registering for events, and making payments was completed by filling out a contact form or directly emailing UnitedDog.
Every single student - and UnitedDog has many - had to email the owners directly for every type of service they offered!
The information desired was hard to find
Students wanted to stay up to date on the latest upcoming events and classes, which meant checking each individual page for every type of event (i.e. online classes, workshops, seminars, trials, etc.).
The content did not match students’ expectations
The original website’s branding at times gave off a sort of ‘family-friendly’ vibe. Everyone who visits the website knows dog agility and seeks training from Jessica and Perry because they want to compete.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
The original map was scattered
The original primary navigation held a “Payments” page simply informing users they could pay in-person or with PayPal. The “Rentals” link confused users in regards to being able to actually rent the UnitedDog facility. There were seven additional secondary nav links to the different types of events/classes pages only accessible from the footer.
The new map is succinct
We simplified the original site map by housing all of the content from the original website under 6 new primary navigation links based on our card sorting results. “Instruction” is now one page with every type of training/class and “Events” contains every new event. Lastly, the “Payments” page was removed and we changed “Rentals” to “Facility Rental” for clarity.
FINAL DESIGN & RATIONALE
LEARNINGS AND REFLECTION
Keeping our expectations realistic
Initially, we believed having to stay within a similar template style on Squarespace was a huge obstacle. As we moved forward in the project though, we really appreciated the challenge of working with our client to create the best possible experience for them in a way they were comfortable with. In the real world, road blocks always pop up, and that’s alright.
Always remain humble
After shipping the design, everyone was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to see the response from students. Jess and Perry entered dates/times for training – and those appointments lasted barely 30 minutes on the site. A ton of new students signed up for spots, which left some of their long-time students angry. Our client now sends newsletters to their recurring students that give specific dates and times that new slots will become available.
Check out UnitedDog’s improved experience here!