8th Reign Group is an image consulting and personal branding agency, connecting style to brand.
8th Reign Group is an image consulting and personal branding agency that believes your style connects you to your brand. 8th Reign Group works with corporations, small businesses and c-suite executives. The company provides style workshops, personal wardrobe styling and retail event planning. The company’s goal is to form an ongoing partnership with professionals to focus on the client’s outward and inner identity.
8th Reign Group needed a redesign for their responsive website.
When beginning, the website consisted of an ‘about’ page that consisted of an image of the founder along with her personal biography. There was not much to the website and it also looked outdated. The website needed to be redesigned and expanded. The client’s goal was to have a place to direct existing and potential clients so they can learn more about the founder, the company and the services they offer.
When I initially looked at the website I deduced that the site not only needed to be expanded, it also needed call to action buttons. There was not a way to connect with 8th Reign Group. I would later find out, through the company founder, why they weren’t included and her purpose for having a website. I will say, the information she gave wasn’t what I expected to hear.
The first time the client and I came together she explained to me the purpose of her company and her passion for what she does. She made it clear that her company does not focus solely on styling clients. Her goal is to connect with clients and guide them through all aspects of their professional and personal journey.
When speaking with the founder about what she wanted for the website, she expressed that she wanted a sight that was elegant, with a clean layout. She saw the website as an expanded business card of sorts for existing and potential clients. She also explained that she wanted to present articles she’d written and introduce users to her newer endeavors, which include professional coaching and public speaking. What surprised me the most was that she did not want a contact page. At this point, my hypothetical redesign wasn’t going to work.
Competitive Analysis:
After doing a competitive analysis I realized that companies that offered related services had similar layouts. I not only looked at other websites, I had the client look at them also and point out what she thought worked for her and didn’t work. This included taking a look at informational architecture, color palettes, images, content and overall layout.
Survey:
Participants were surveyed to determine their styling habits and what they look for when searching for and working with an image and branding company. They were asked about their user experience when engaging with company websites that offered similar services.
As a result of my competitive analysis and survey distribution, these themes were most prevalent:
Below are a collection of the pain points, needs and motivations of users discovered during the interviews.
When creating the user flow I referred to the results from my competitive analysis and surveys. I focused on user needs that came up most often and organized the pages based on the feedback. For example, it was important to users that they know the founder’s background and experience. So there is a short introduction to the founder on the homepage and then the full bio is located on the second page of the website.
I created a preliminary design that would satisfy the business needs of my client, while also focusing on the pain points, needs and motivations of users. My goal was to emphasize the following features.
The company founder wanted a clean and elegant design that spoke to the business professional.
The client wanted to incorporate black, white, gray and silver as the primary colors and purple and gold as secondary colors. The client wanted topography that was sophisticated yet bold and a layout that emphasized the company’s mission, which focuses on inspiring and empowering the modern day business executive.
I presented an initial mood board to the client. Overall she liked where things were going, but she thought the color scheme was somewhat dark. I lightened images and she was comfortable with those changes.
One of the challenges was adhering to the founder’s desires for the color palette, while considering accessibility. I presented the founder with user data and some facts about UI and she understood my choices.
The primary goal for the client was to create a website that did three things, introduce who she was, her mission, the services she provided and her quarterly publications.
I ultimately created a design that addressed the users’ needs as well as the business goals of the client. The word elegant repeatedly came up when talking to the client. She works with and wants to attract a more professional clientele. This is why certain accent colors were incorporated, such as gold and purple, which tend to denote opulence.
The feel of the website needed to draw on keywords that describe 8th Reign Group, such as confidence, empowerment, inspiration and authenticity. The founder also wanted existing and potential clients to know about her experience. Call to action buttons were not in the original design. They were added to encourage and ease navigation. The client wanted her site to be clear about the services she offered. During the research phase I found that this was also important to users. When creating the design, all of these factors were at the forefront of my thinking.
The client wanted potential and existing clients to have access to her publications.
The founder wanted to integrate her quarterly publications into the website. A couple of the options we discussed were additional web pages which would include the articles or access to a link that would take users to the article on an outside website. Although we didn’t want to direct users away from the site, because of time constraints we decided that would be the best solution in the short term.
I performed remote, moderated usability testing on a prototype. I asked participants to complete the following tasks.
Some of the feedback from users pertained to color contrast and consistency with the layout. The average time for users to complete a task was approximately 2 minutes. On observation, users appeared to move through the various tasks seamlessly, with no major missteps.
The client did not want a contact page.
8th Reign is a smaller business and for this reason the client did not want the influx of emails that can come with a contact page. I explained that it would be beneficial to have a system for people to reach out, especially given the results of user research.
Ultimately, we decided to redirect users to a professional management tool for image consultants that the company uses for existing clients. This tool includes an in-depth questionnaire to learn more about the client. I added a contact page with a call to action button that sends users to this managing tool. This decision was made because, while it allows users to connect with 8th Reign Group, it also curtails some of the traffic.
This project was unique in that I didn’t have prior knowledge of the industry. One of the biggest challenges was that although my research made a clear indication of what should be included on the site, I also had to meet the client’s expectations based on their own expertise and business goals. The client also vacillated somewhat on what she wanted for the website. Ultimately, I was able to expand the website and create a design that was elegant and reinforced the business’ objective to inform existing and potential clients about what 8th Reign Group offers.
