college weekends
WHAT IS COLLEGE WEEKENDS?
College Weekends is a platform that aims to connect alumni, fans, parents of students and other travelers with short term lodging, vacation rentals and activities in college towns.
REDESIGN CASE STUDY
WHY THIS REDESIGN?
When College Weekends reached out to me looking for some UX and branding advice, I immediately went to their website and social media platforms to see what we were working with. While I knew this was a business aiming to connect college visitors with lodging and an all inclusive college experience, the message was not clearly conveyed upon visiting their website and social media.
After further navigation of the site, I saw minimal brand consistency, disorganized content, and most importantly, a lack of CTA’s which ultimately caused viewers to leave the site rather than being pulled in to complete enticing user flows.
Conclusively, it was clear to me that this website needed a makeover and I was more than excited to take this on.
GOALS & MOTIVATIONS FOR THE REDESIGN
GOALS FOR THE REDESIGN
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Develop a more cohesive brand that can be implemented both on their website and social media.
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Evaluate the website's main functions, find points of friction, and improve the user experience by clarifying CTA’s and making necessary information more readily available.
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Deliver an intuitive user interface and improve overall aesthetic.
MY PERSONAL GOALS
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Take responsibility for various roles involved such as User Researcher, UX and UI Designer.
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Exercise my creative ability by challenging current design decisions and developing more seamless and user friendly solutions.
WEBSITE ANALYSIS
I started my research by doing an in depth analysis of the website in order to understand the functionalities, architecture, and navigation. I pointed out some initial usability issues and pain points to compare to my user research findings.
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Unclear homepage, no direct CTA and not entirely sure of the services being offered or what I should do first.
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Renter information and Owner information is combined with other features such as blog posts and featured schools, not highlighted or clearly accessible in one cohesive place.
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Navigation options are redundant and scattered, information could be optimized.
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Should do a better job conveying the benefits instead of expecting users to go out of their way and teach themselves.
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Blog posts are at the bottom and not immediately visible or accessible.
UNDERSTANDING THE USERS
College Weekend’s users consist primarily of parents, alumni, and fans of universities. This creates a fairly large target audience of men and women aged roughly 25-75.
INTERVIEWS
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I started my research by conducting interviews with 4 users in College Weekend’s primary target audience, parents of college students and alumni that frequently visited college towns. All user’s have frequently used rental property websites to find lodging in college towns, but none had prior knowledge of College Weekends. The male interviewees age ranged from 25-60, and the females ranged from 45-55.
KEY INSIGHTS
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User’s don’t know what to do when they arrive at the website, they are unsure about what College Weekends is offering them.
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“My initial reaction is that this is a university website”
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Most participants said that they might feel more confident using rental property websites like Airbnb or VRBO because they are easy to use and reliable.
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It wasn’t clear to user’s why they should use College Weekends over a platform like Airbnb or VRBO.
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User interface doesn’t look familiar, somewhat difficult to navigate.
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
After identifying and analyzing pain points through personal analysis and user research, I defined the primary challenge to address in the redesign.
Convey clearly to users WHY they should use College Weekends over competing rental sites and call users to action (renting, looking up experiences, listing properties) rather than leaving the site.
PAPER PROTOTYPING
For paper wireframes, I went through the results of competitive analysis as well as analyzed the comments and concerns of users during research and sketched out possible layouts for both mobile and desktop versions.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I conducted competitive analysis with some of College Weekend’s direct competitors by comparing the key features in each vacation rental platform. I then displayed a general summary of my findings in a structured tabular format.
THE REDESIGN - MID FIDELITY
I organized the following screens into sets of the main problems I found and my proposed solution.
PROBLEM
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CW Advantage for Renters/Owners is redundant and relies on the user to go out of their way to teach themselves why they should use CW’s services.
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Customers don't stay on the page very long, there is no obvious CTA
MY SOLUTION
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Do a better job of conveying the advantage through the display. Create a fun illustration displaying the “one stop shop experience” which leads you to scroll down to a clean display of all the main facts with matching graphics to instagram. (Illustration + graphics created by me)
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have an immediate CTA that pushes users to search for college town listings.
PROBLEM
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Blog posts are difficult to find/are unorganized and difficult to filter.
MY SOLUTION
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Blog posts have their own button in the menu bar that leads to an improved blog page which emphasizes recent blogs and organizes them by topic.
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Add featured blogs to the individual school pages that will navigate to a focused school blog page.
PROBLEM
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There is no clear CTA that pushes users to list their property with College Weekends.
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Signing up as an owner
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Inconsistent buttons on “CW Owner Advantage page” (Create Acct & Sign Up)
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After users have already clicked on owner, they are prompted to choose between owner/renter again
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Users are required to put in a lot of information (including banking info) before creating an account or adding their listening - too much too soon.
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MY SOLUTION
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Create a clear CTA in the menu bar that prompts users to list their property. Following this, create a quick sign up flow with the incentive of earning money that eases you into the account process with a more visually appealing layout - 3 easy steps.
ADDITIONAL
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Implement school mascot graphics into featured listings for brand consistency.
FINAL SCREENS
SOCIAL MEDIA BRAND
In addition to a new branding direction and UX/UI for the website, I also created a new style that can be implemented into College Weekend's social media. I wanted to create an aesthetic that is more visually appealing, cohesive and organized. In addition to a visually aesthetic moodboard, I also created a set of guidelines on the type of content they should post moving forward.
POST REQUIREMENTS
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Adobe Lightroom Preset: Santorini preset 4 (gives a cool, blue vibe that goes well with the brand)
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No stories as pictures
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Minimal text on a post, only a header (or header & subheader for an ad or announcement) - Instagram reprioritizes posts with a lot of words
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Focus on impactful photos and put majority of text in caption
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Have an equal balance in posts between student life/activities and rental properties
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All text on posts should be written in the same font (other than "graduate", a good choice is "Rubik" - this sans serif font is clear, simple and playful)
CONTENT
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Followers want to see what they are getting
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Rental properties
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Cute places in college towns
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Things to do in the area (restaurants, bars)
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More content photos rather than videos with no sound
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Example: Top Pizza Joints could be a slide show of yummy food posts rather than a video
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Rather than posts like "Top 10 College Bars" keep each post local to one school
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Simple AD/announcement posts with consistent color and font
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More engaging content
ORIGINAL
REDESIGN
