Rethink Yearbooks was founded by Mudita Singhal and her husband Anuj Shah in 2021. Being parents themselves, they recognized the need for yearbooks that could be personalized for each student. The company offers personalized and customized yearbooks for every student using AI facial recognition technology.
Mudita and our team had a first meeting to discuss her goals and frustrations with the website currently.
I knew that there were some major issues with the current website because customers were coming but then leaving before getting a price quote.
The explanation of the product on the website was also unclear to potential customers, causing them to leave without inquiring further.
I knew that some of the layout of the site needed retooling.
Here is the initrial site:
Summary: The site was losing customers based on its layout and information architecture so I conducted user interviews to inform the creation of a site map, user persona, and user flow, resulting in a more visually appealing and user-friendly site that better met the needs of customers.
The original site map shows how the information was organized and labeled, including several buttons that led to new website pages. If users selected the "Bring to your school" button, they were prompted to schedule a Zoom call.
In user interviews, I asked people to go to the website to find information about pricing and then understand how to bring Rethink Yearbooks to their school.
After people had completed those tasks, we asked a series of follow-up questions in order to figure out which aspects of the site were confusing:
How easy is the site to navigate overall (1-5 where 5 is the easiest to navigate)?
Were you frustrated by the experience in any way? If so, what frustrated you?
Do you feel as if you understand the product and could explain it to someone else?
I found that people had similar comments about the site:
One person said that they did not like filling out a form with their information, just to find out about pricing.
Another person noted that the blog was confusing because they were not sure who wrote it.
A third person found the buttons confusing because when they clicked a button, it took them to a part of the website that they were not expecting.
You can see this in the user flow. When the user selects "bring to your school" a calendar then pops up to schedule a meeting
This was part of what frustrated people about the site. When they clicked on "bring to your school", they wanted to immediately see the process for how to bring Rethink Yearbooks to their school - not to immediately schedule a meeting.
Similarly, when they clicked on "pricing", they were not given any pricing options upfront, but instead had to fill out a form and wait for a representative to get back to them. This was also frustrating.
In order to understand how the Rethink website was different from other personalized yearbook websites, I did a competitive analysis -- a comparison between competitors. It was interesting that none of the websites had up-front pricing.
I knew that this up-front pricing feature would help clarify the product and the process of ordering from Rethink Yearbooks, so we focus on up-front pricing in our solutions.
After the first round of usability testing was completed, I conducted interviews with all types of possible visitors to the site: the school administrator, the parent, and the high schooler.
I then sorted and synthesized the results of the interviews and found that the interviewees comments could be sorted into five main categories.
Cost
Privacy
Ordering
Input/Effort/Personalization
Input/Looking back/Time
Overall, I came to the conclusion that parents felt that these personalized yearbooks would provide their children with an amazing time capsule and a memento of their growth throughout the school year.
In the next phase, I used my research to create three different personas: one for the school administrator, one for the parent and one for the high schooler.
Using all of the information from our personas, I formulated a problem statement:
I then started sketching out our ideas for the redesign:
In this first sketch, I changed the navigation bar around so that people could quickly see how to get a quote.
I also thought it would be helpful to include "our mission" and "how it works" on the nav bar so that users of the site would immediately see where to navigate in order to get the information they needed right away.
Based on the wireframe ideas, I created a new site map where I define the structure of the new website.
I have added an "about us" section to get to know the company and their cause, a dropdown menu in the header to "learn more" about the product and the process, and an "order your yearbook" button to guide parents who are only on the website to purchase their student's yearbook.
In the footer, I have listed all the pages on the site, Here, users can subscribe to the newsletter, see Rethink yearbooks blog posts, and read the FAQ.
Below is the final prototype for the new website:
Our next steps include:
Changing some content and features on the hi-fidelity version of the website with the recommendations given to us by the usability testers, like adding an instructional video to help users understand the product and the processes.
Thinking about creating a price calculator, or subscription packages so Rethink Yearbooks stand out from their competitors, and show users that they are the best option no matter what type of yearbook they need.
Designing a user flow and persona for the parents that are ordering yearbooks.
Focusing on targeting a wider audience like preschools.