Performing a UX/UI Assessment to Optimize VAULT’s Site
Overview
Under the umbrella of Pioneer Square Brands, VAULT helps companies solve problems and run more efficiently with affordable solutions that improve customer experiences across industries. They provide cable-free charging, mobile point of sale, rugged case protection for devices, and more — to organizations in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, hospitality, and various other industries. To optimize their site, VAULT contacted Velir to perform a user experience (UX) / user interface (UI) assessment to help them identify opportunities to improve the site’s UX and increase its leads and conversions.
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Challenge
To help VAULT discover areas on their site where they could improve UX and increase leads and conversions, we proposed a UX/UI assessment. This assessment’s goal was to uncover opportunities for enhancement that we could implement and measure to determine their success.
In our conversations with VAULT, we knew their website needed to tell a story of protection, power, and point of sale (POS) for their brand. Based on this information, we helped them develop four goals to guide our UX/UI assessment of their site.
Embed marketing seamlessly in the shopping journey — The website's narrative should carry through each step of the user's shopping experience, beyond the homepage and product landing pages with a presence on the request a quote, shop, and product detail pages.
Engage audiences at every step — The site experience should be engaging and allow users to explore products, while effectively guiding them through a journey that accomplishes their goal(s).
Unify usability and aesthetics — Accessibility is key to the success of any website, but it doesn’t require compromise on quality design. Both priorities can create a great user experience.
Provide effortless guidance — We can remove friction for prospective customers by streamlining the main navigation, adding additional filtering abilities, restructuring page layouts, providing clear calls to action (CTAs), and presenting industry-standard shopping cart experiences.
Based on these goals, we wanted the UX part of our assessment to analyze the site search, shopping experience, navigation, and page structure of VAULT’s website, and our UI part to examine the site’s colors, typography, and brand elements.
VAULT’s challenges included:
- Improving their site’s user experience
- Increasing leads and conversions for their site
- Embedding marketing throughout their shopping journey
- Engaging audiences at every step of their journeys and guiding them effectively in accomplishing their goals
- Unifying usability and aesthetics to increase accessibility
- Removing friction for users with streamlined navigation, filtering, page layouts, and CTAs
We conducted a comprehensive UX/UI assessment of the VAULT’s website to discover ways to enhance their user experience and interface design
Our approach included:
- Performing a UX assessment of VAULT’s site search, shopping experience, navigation, and page structure to find opportunities for improvement
- Providing concrete recommendations to improve all the areas of VAULT’s website that we looked at
- Analyzing the visual strategy, including fonts, colors, and brand elements of VAULT’s website with a UI assessment to uncover ways the site can become a more cohesive and engaging experience
UX Assessment
Our UX assessment analyzed VAULT’s site search, shopping experience, navigation, and page structure to find opportunities for improvement.
Site Search
As a quick win, we strongly suggested adding site search functionality on mobile, since it wasn’t available on VAULT’s site. We also recommended autocorrect and other guidance for typos or imprecise terms, and filtering options to refine searches so users can find what they need faster and easier.
Shopping Experience
Velir uncovered opportunities to inject marketing positioning and weave VAULT’s brand promise throughout the shopping experience. Additionally, we recommended that VAULT reduce unnecessary friction in the checkout process by streamlining their shopping cart pages to match best practices; building out their product pages with helper content like instructional product videos and customer reviews; and adding filters so customers can easily sort their products by device, features, and price.
Navigation
We identified ways VAULT could improve their site’s navigation on desktop and mobile to let users explore their content more easily. Our team provided options to streamline their navigational structure, optimize their menus on mobile, and implement intuitive design principles to enhance user engagement across devices.
Page Structure
Our experts pinpointed opportunities for VAULT to increase accessibility on all devices and usability on mobile devices. We recommended design principles that cater to users with disabilities while adhering to web standards that enhance cross-browser stability and performance. We also explained how they could improve responsiveness for mobile devices to enhance user satisfaction across platforms.
UI Assessment
On top of our UX assessment, we also assessed the visual strategy of VAULT’s website, including its fonts, colors, and brand elements. The insights from this assessment were used to identify opportunities for revising the website's visual look and feel, ensuring a cohesive and engaging user experience.
Colors
Velir advised VAULT on how to use their color palette more strategically, how to clearly define their brand colors, how to confirm that colors meet accessibility requirements for contrast, and how to layer their colors so content can be unblocked to increase user engagement.
Fonts
We found ways that VAULT could improve their font hierarchy to improve UX, adjust their fonts and color contrasts for accessibility, and select a typeface that creates consistency between print and digital marketing assets.
Brand Elements
Our UI experts identified ways for VAULT to standardize their brand elements across channels while creating a visually distinct site experience. We recommended they continue emphasizing the brand’s primary red on the site and using a consistent corner radius across all components and CTAs.
Solution
We presented VAULT a readout of our UX/UI assessment with all the opportunities we found for improvement on their site along with concrete advice for seizing these opportunities. Then we developed a plan for implementing our recommendations and made the adjustments across VAULT’s site. We’ve tracked the changes we’ve made to measure their success and we’re proud to say they’ve made a huge difference for VAULT.
Results:
- New site search functionality for mobile and improved search with filtering options, autocorrect, and guided search
- An optimized shopping experience with robust product pages, product filtering options, and a simpler checkout process
- A streamlined navigation that lets users explore VAULT’s products more easily across devices
- Increased accessibility and responsiveness on all devices
- More strategic and accessible use of color throughout the site
- Better font hierarchy and contrast for text accessibility
- Standardized brand elements that also create a visually distinct site experience