Your website is more than an information depot. Your website is the first engagement visitors have with your brand. First impressions – and experiences – will ultimately determine how potential customers receive your brand.
The manner in which visitors experience your website – called “user experience – is an integral part of the website building process. According to user experience best practices, information on a website should be:
- Useful: Your content should be original and fulfill a need
- Usable: Site must be easy to use
- Desirable: Image, identity, brand, and other design elements are used to evoke emotion and appreciation
- Findable: Content needs to be navigable and locatable onsite and offsite
- Accessible: Content needs to be accessible to people with disabilities
- Credible: Users must trust and believe what you tell them
At Jacob Tyler, we create user experiences that drive traffic and get results for our clients. We begin by employing a collaborative, tailored discovery phase to determine the best approach for user experience. Some projects are based on months of research and user testing to generate clicks, others are designed to establish brand awareness and tell an engaging online story. All interactive projects are designed to provide an intuitive, simple and engaging experience for all users, on any screen size – and from any device.
Our client JBS International – a women-owned firm offering a broad and diverse set of management and information technology consulting services to public and private-sector clients – was recently awarded an Interactive Media Award for “Best in Class” in the professional services category for their website. We’re incredibly proud to have worked with the JBS team to create this award-winning user experience and website. The following case study brief on our work with JBS is a peek into the Jacob Tyler process for creating user experiences that educate, engage and excite.
Step 1: Discovery, Research and Architecture
Successful projects are based on solid foundations. We led JBS through a guided discovery session with client stakeholders to discuss service offerings, products and expertise areas in detail. After presenting in-depth brand and competitive audit research, we defined key findings and strategic recommendations to use as a basis for the user experience strategy.
To guide the hierarchy of information on the website, we collaborated with JBS to develop a brand architecture that visualized the organization of products and service offerings. The resulting architecture told the brand story and clearly differentiates JBS from other consulting companies.
Step 2: Wireframe, Prototype and Functional Specifications
Not all projects employ a basic, top-down hierarchy. With JBS, we implemented client stories to drive the flow of information. All relevant information was one click away and no more than three levels deep to prevent “dead ends.” We introduced a color-coding system in the wireframe stage to clearly show where pages linked together. An interactive prototype – with detailed functional notes – allowed stakeholders to experience the website structure and test user stories.
Step 3: Concept and Responsive Design
With JBS, we employed a mobile-first design mentality, but understood that stakeholders required desktop layouts for approval. In order to show how our concepts would translate for various devices, we designed responsive header and footer elements to present with each concept. The initial presentation also included various interactive states – such as rollovers, menus and other animation techniques – to demonstrate how each design concept would come to life once developed.
Employing a user-tested strategy allowed us to create an effective, intuitive and engaging website where visitors would enjoy a positive experience online and with the JBS brand overall. The finished result is a well-organized and inviting online experience that allows JBS to easily integrate user feedback and new features along with company growth.
If you would like to learn more about our process for creating engaging user experiences, drop us a line!