Goal: Re-design for usability and conversion
Usability requires simplicity and clarity. In some cases this can be achieved by a few words, an image, or a graphic. When your business model is based on teaching professionals in the fields of psychology and long term care, to apply geropsychology, as part of the treatment regimen for elderly patients, clarity is harder to achieve.
A new user to a website is not patient. He will not spend much time trying to figure out what the site does. The onus is on the designer to communicate the message quickly - within 10 to 30 seconds. CoHealth failed because the designer did not understand the business.
With the objectives of usability and conversion in mind, we re-designed the CoHealth website to clearly and succinctly explain the company mission and value proposition to the end user, to be easy to use, and intuitive to navigate. The following two images show the site in its pre-project and post-project states:
| Pre-Project Design |
Final Design |
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During the re-design we looked at and modified the following elements:
Tag line
Old: "excellence in healthcare education" was not indicative of the real function of CoHealth. It was too broad to interest the target customer.
New: "improving eldercare by training the provider - geropsychology-based care for the whole person" is better targeted and describes clearly the company's product. It may be a bit too long for a catchy tag line, but it communicates the organizational mission accurately and quickly
Banner
Old: Contained too much content and not enough white-space - the banner needs to be simple and visually appealing. The "Member Login" section did not need to be in the banner since there was already a link to the "My Account" page there.
New: We modified the banner by moving the "Member Login" section below the navigation bar and changing the layout of the search button.
Communicating the Value Proposition
Old: The site was not clear about its target customer or the product it was selling. The top of the page (below the navigation bar) gave priority to the headlines "Courses on Aging" and "From published experts... Specialized Courses on Aging - behavioral approaches for professionals and consumers." Nowhere did it mention that the training was for caregivers (psychologists, long-term-care workers, and families), to learn how to use psychology of aging (geropsychology), to take care of the elderly. The text was more indicative of content to help people understand and deal with aging - therefore targeted towards the aging population itself - rather than psychological training for taking care of the aged - target towards those looking after the aging population.
New: The headline was changed to "Caring for Older Adults - behavioral approaches for professionals and consumers" clearly identifying that the material would help the caregiver use behavioral approaches to care for the elderly. The value proposition was given priority in a text box just below the logo:
CoHealth provides training and resources for psychologists, behavioral and healthcare professionals, and family members to better care for the elderly by understanding the psychology of aging along with the physical effects of growing old — a collaborative approach to care for the whole person.
Course Search
Old: Ability to easily and intuitively search through the available courses was a critically important attribute of the site. The user needed to get to the content that he would interested in with minimal effort and thought. The search structure based on Topic and Audience was good, but the categories within were not well designed and had significant overlap. The Quick Search links were unclear - using pre-defined combinations of Audience, Topic, and Course Type instead of allowing the user to narrow down each category as necessary. While listing Most Popular Topics could have been helpful, there were too many topics in each category making it a hindrance instead - requiring the user to read through many overlapping options before figuring out where he would fit.
New: Search was simplified into five categories (Audience, Topic, Objective, Type, and CE credit) with no more than five marginally-overlapping sub categories each. The user is now able to perfectly identify offerings that apply to him with minimal effort (e.g. a psychologist looking for CE Credit courses in Integrated Care would click on three check boxes to be immediately shown all courses that satisfy those criteria).
Banner ad
Old: The site had a small ad on the right column pitching a course on establishing a psychology practice in a long-term-care facility - ambiguously named "Practices in LTC".
New: A new banner ad on the center column emphasizes the course and identifies it correctly as "Establishing a Mental-Health Practice in LTC"
Call To Action (CTA)
Old: The goal of every ecommerce site is to convert traffic into eventual revenue. From a CoHealth point of view, this meant selling online courses, or at least collecting the user's contact information to enable future sales. CoHealth attempted to do this with three CTA's on the home page - "Become a Member", 'Subscribe to the Newsletter", or "Download a Free Article" in exchange for an email address.
New: Without changing the three CTA's, the workflow and site layout were changed to enhance the CTA visibility, simplify conversion, and lower anxiety.
- The "Become a Member" CTA was placed next to the member sign-in to create desire.
- The newsletter sign in was simplified from a two page process that required many pieces of personal information, to a text field for the email address and one click.
- The article download was enhanced by adding an abstract allowing the user to see the gist of the article before deciding to surrender his email address - the abstract may also increase the time on site by enabling the user to read more content on site.
Testimonials
While a testimonial page existed, it was hidden among the footer links. The new design, instead added a testimonial box to the home page with excerpts from random testimonials and links to the testimonials page for a complete list. Testimonials go a long way towards reducing the user's anxiety - but they need to be visible.
Visual flow
The site's visuals were improved to clearly offer top-to-bottom and left-to-right information paths - leading to improved clarity and ease of use.
In summary, the following image shows the annotated design; identifying the enhancements made and the need/justification for each:
| Final Design With Annotations |
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