During 2020, I had the opportunity to dive deep into my website to determine if was useful for my visitors. I did what any Product Designer would do, research, ideate, and build.
Audit:
After 10 years experience as a desiger (🎉!), I asked myself, was my website still doing what I needed it to do? I started by reviewing my website in the eyes of three types of visitor.
- Colleagues and other creatives in the community
- HR representatives that sift through dozens of portfolios a day
- Mom
If my website was successful for these three personas, I would consider my website a success. Was it? (Spoilers, it was not). Let’s take a look at the old home page:
Information Architecture
- Work
- About
- Blog
- Resume
- Contact
- Were my visitors rewarded with the content on each page?
- Was the information on each page worth a new click every time?
- Could I simplify the amount of choices I give visitors?
- How could I make the content on each page more impactful?
I changed the site architecture to include richer content on fewer pages. I combined About, Resume, and Contact into one, longer page. This left me with three navigation links.
New Face
Here are some decisions I made:
- Lead a visitor as if I am presenting to them. Specifically choose projects I recommend looking at.
- Announce what I do at the top of the page. This leaves no room for error about what visitors are about to see
- Reduce the number of projects down at first glance. How will anyone know where to start?
- Hide unnecessary content by relocating older projects to an archive page. This gives visitors the option to dive deeper if they want to.
- Make it easier for visitors to move to other areas on my site. In order to do this, I inserted large links at the bottom of every page.
Prototype & Testing
I built a staging website based on my new architecture and layouts. Once complete, I sent the site and a list of questions to my audience; including designers, job recruiters, developers, writers, and even my mom. Once gathering feedback, I made changes and published it for the world to see (Hi world! What do you think?).
We did it everyone
After the update, I saw an uptick in conact from peers and new recruiters about how much they enjoyed my site. Another great success metric: mom loved it.
Along with the new website, I also created a show reel to celebrate 10 years of professional experience! Take a look at the video here: https://gergwerk.com/10-years/
