Optimize Before Overhaul @ Verisign

2019-2020

ROLE

UX Designer


COMPANY

Verisign


TYPE

Case Study

Becoming a UX Designer has been the most rewarding thing for my career. I come into work everyday happy and ready to solve any problems that come my way. Sometimes, problems come in disguised as complex solutions, but there might be a smaller problem that could be solved.


All it needs is reframing.


This case study shows how I reduced drop-off rates by ~30%.

TLDR


Background: Verisign is a company focused on domain name registry and internet infrastructure (including .com and .net. top-level domains), and runs blog sites campaigning for the use of those domains


Problem: Users weren't reading the articles on those sites


Solution: Enhance the scannability of the sites


  • Result: Reduced drop-off rates by ~30% and increased site traffic which opened opportunities for optimizations across various components and user experiences of each site



As a UX Designer, my work ranges from conducting research to create intentional design decisions, mock up high fidelity prototypes for entire experiences, to the smallest interactions like a components hover states. One of the products I worked on at Verisign was keepdreamingup.net. This particular project involves the small, but important factor of readability. It also shows how a huge redesign isn't always necessary.

Research


Originally, the stakeholder solutioned for a website overhaul. However, I thought of different approaches to the project. As I gathered the data from the analytics team, I zoned in on the heat maps the most. I started to gather my own research focusing on heat maps.



Discovery


It was my first time working with heat maps, so I did some background study on them before I started the project. From there I learned about reading patterns and focal points on interfaces. That’s when I realized that I didn’t need an overhaul of content just to make something better. All I really needed to do was design for scannability.


Suggestions


From the heat maps I noticed that most focus was in the hero image or above the fold, but then go cold after that. I suggested a few different approaches in order to retain the user's attention to prevent a sudden drop off:




Bolding Concepts


Most users scan articles and skip what’s irrelevant. Scrollers should catch these as they scan through the article, and either stop at that line, or even better, read for more.

Imagery


Adding images can help break apart long lines of text during scanning. The pictures can have meaningful captions, or just be decorative in nature.

Sharable Pull Quotes


Pull quotes are good ways to break apart the text but should be sentence case. Location is crucial and should entice a user to look for the section it comes from rather than reading it as double. Also, adding a simple share feature adds interaction to an otherwise static page.

Read Time


Similar to seeing how big a scroll bar is on the side of a website, a read time allows a user to incorporate time management when going through articles.

Aftermath


My suggestions increased site traffic and decreased drop-off rates by ~30%.


The success created more opportunities for optimizations such as redesigning the site's search bar, updating the Tips & Tools page, and reconfiguring the menu component. It also paved the way for me to work on NameStudio, a tool that helps users brainstorm domain names.


This project taught me that just because it's small doesn't mean that it's insignificant. Any improvements to a site's UX can make a huge impact, and it doesn't have to be a blue sky project. You just have to find the right way to make that impact.