HOGARTHS
Project Research / Planning / Website
Empathise
Hogarths Hotels & Restaurants offer luxury hospitality service from their two venues, Stone Manor and Solihull. They required a website to showcase Hogarth's beautiful locations whilst increasing conversion on their primary services.
Before this project began, the Covid pandemic hit the hospitality industry hard financially. This lead to lower staff numbers followed by an influx of bookings due to the borders being closed. The website compiled over many years was no longer converting as well as it could be. Hogarths had gone through a process of rebranding and wanted the website to match this.
Define
To identify the needs of the user's we will need to create a Persona. We used a questionnaire to unpack the user's needs and create a tailored user experience. The purpose of working with personas is to develop solutions, products and services based upon the needs and goals of your users. That is why we focus on a goal-directed persona, which cuts straight to the nitty-gritty, using journey mapping.
The journey mapping helps us to identify the highs and lows of the user's journey. We set a scenario then run through 4 steps of any decision process:
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Define
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Compare
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Negotiate
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Select
The journey mapping then allowed to identify opportunities to improve the journey and meet the personas expectations. We could then assign internal ownership metrics to help us track and define if the solution was successful.
Ideate
The define stage leads us to the following problem statement:
"The website we want to index well on Google and convert traffic at a higher rate in as few clicks as possible.
The original websites sitemap was confusing and difficult to navigate, making it hard to find information. We also wanted to change the sitemap to draw priority to the highest converting areas. We also found poor scores for performance, accessibility and best practices on Google Lighthouse, leading to lower SEO scores.
We aimed to build a new website with a streamlined sitemap, designed to convert traffic gained from an improved SEO derived from higher Lighthouse scores."
The sitemap we created during this stage focused on the primary goals of the personas through the use of landing pages. The landing pages include targeted keywords, tailored information, trust-building tools and easily accessed points of conversion. Improved user journey focused on increasing the SEO score through fewer clicks. Once we knew the required sitemap, pages and type of content, we were ready for the prototype stage.
Prototype
To create a high-fidelity prototype Adobe XD was used, giving us the scope to produce inexpensive scaled-down versions of the final product. Adobe XD provided the ability to add high levels of interactivity to create a life-like experience. This lead to problems being identified earlier and updated during the design phase. These resolved issues during the design stage save the project creeping during the development stage.
Adobe XD review tools include the ability to provide a shareable link with the client. This link allows the client to experience the product as their end-user will. Feedback can then be fed back directly through the links commenting facility built into Adobe XD. Feedback is not only quicker but more precise, leading to a shorter review period.
Test
This project is going through its final stages of content upload before going live. As the new website is on a development server, accurate Lighthouse reviews have not been possible. The website also includes tracking through Google Analytics to analyse performance.
Areas of my involvement that are measurable before launch are the project timeline and client satisfaction. For the project, we had a short timeframe to work with and preventing project creep was vital. The design stage ran semi-simultaneously with the development stage to meet the short deadline. Due to a well-considered Empathise & Define stage, the prototype phase ran smoothly. The client understood the decisions that influenced the prototype resulting in well-considered amends. A deeper understanding of the user's needs builds trust with the client allowing for a better final product.