Redesigning the Stay22 top-of-funnel experience

I was tasked with rebuilding the Stay22 website to provide a simpler and more intuitive user experience. Noemie Turcotte, the former Head of Marketing at Stay22, recognized the need to enhance the website's clarity and understanding for top-of-funnel leads. Despite our product's advanced features, we discovered that users often struggled to grasp its value upon their initial visit.

Understanding Our Users: Unveiling Surprising Insights

To gain deeper insights into our users' perspectives, we leveraged UserTesting.com, a popular platform known for user testing. Through this process, we discovered that many users faced difficulties in visualizing our product effectively.

The Power of Visuals: Redesigning Above the Fold

Let's take a moment to examine the previous version of our website, specifically above the fold. It lacked clarity and overwhelmed visitors. To address this, we adopted a product-first approach, emphasizing intuitive visual cues to help users understand our core offering.

"The best designs tell you everything you need to know about a product at a glance." - Khoi Vinh, former Design Director at The New York Times

By prominently showcasing interactive maps, we enabled visitors to quickly grasp the value of Stay22. This approach aligned with studies that highlight the importance of visual design in enhancing user experience. Research conducted by Nielsen Norman Group showed that users form lasting impressions of a website within the first 50 milliseconds of their visit.

The Redesigned Above the Fold: An Enhanced User Journey

With our redesign, we created a visually captivating and informative above-the-fold section. The new design not only communicated our product's core functionality but also offered a seamless user experience. By incorporating insights from UX design principles, such as Hick's Law and Fitts's Law, we ensured that users could navigate effortlessly and make informed decisions.

Measurable Success: The Impact of Redesign

Upon implementing the new design, we witnessed significant improvements. By reducing cognitive load and streamlining the user journey, we observed a remarkable decrease in bounce rates. Similar success stories have been documented in various case studies:

• A study conducted by Google found that websites with faster load times experienced a 25% higher ad viewability, a 70% longer average session duration, and a 35% lower bounce rate.
• In a case study by ConversionXL, a simplified and visually appealing checkout process led to a 20% increase in conversions for an e-commerce website.

Optimizing User Flow: The Importance of Information Architecture

While the above-the-fold section created a strong first impression, we recognized the need to optimize the user flow across pages. This involved carefully organizing the information architecture of the website, ensuring logical and intuitive navigation.

Continual Improvement: Testing, Iterating, and Analytics

Our commitment to providing the best user experience extended beyond the initial redesign. We understood the importance of ongoing testing and analysis to refine our approach. By implementing A/B testing solutions, we delivered personalized content to different audience segments, further enhancing engagement and conversions.

"The most effective way to do it is to do it." - Amelia Earhart, Aviation Pioneer

Through these iterative tests, we gained valuable insights and made data-driven decisions. We monitored key performance metrics such as bounce rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, allowing us to optimize the website continually. Similar approaches have yielded remarkable results for leading companies:

• Netflix famously conducted numerous A/B tests, leading to a 30% increase in user engagement and significant improvements in their recommendation algorithm.
• In their quest for continual optimization, Amazon performed more than 200 A/B tests per year, resulting in substantial revenue growth and improved user experiences.

Embracing the Journey: The Future of Stay22

Our journey to provide an exceptional user experience never truly ends. As we continue to learn more about our users, deliver innovative features, and refine our product development pipeline, Stay22 remains dedicated to staying at the forefront of UX and UI design.

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." - Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple Inc.

Join us on this exciting adventure as we shape the future of Stay22, pushing boundaries, and creating remarkable experiences that resonate with users worldwide!

We designed all secondary pages to support this product-first approach, but most importantly, we learned not to roll on assumptions about users. So we implemented a cheaper A/B testing solution to deliver different headlines, images, and CTAs to different audiences and continued measuring the performance of the site over time. Both in time spent on the page, the number of maps generated, the number of calls booked with sales, and, of course, the user's behavior between pages.

With these new tests, we quickly dropped the bounce rate from the high 70's to about 40%! But our journey doesn't stop there. There's more testing and analytics to tackle as we learn more about our users, deliver more features, and even plan our product development pipeline.