Women’s Entrepreneurship Day is a nonprofit organization founded in 2013. Their mission is to raise awareness for the 250 million impoverished girls worldwide who deserve a chance to pursue their business dreams.
WEDO is concerned that their website is outdated, difficult to navigate, and uninviting to users. Additionally, the website lacks resources for women entrepreneurs. While it is important to attract investors and leaders, WEDO feels the need to refocus on the needs of their target audience.
Jenny S., WEDO Business Manager:
“Our website does not communicate our full potential to help women entrepreneurs. We want to sustain our branding while making the website modern, easy to use, and convey a futuristic, impactful, and light-hearted feel.”
Initial user feedback from 5-second testing showed confusion due to excessive content and images, with unclear understanding of who WEDO is and what they do.
😦
“I don’t really understand what they stand for or how they can help me.”
- Yang Lin, Entrepreneur
😵💫
“I just see a lot of pictures and something about crypto, I’m very confused about who they are.”
- Amber, Health Tech Founder
Before Homepage.
Solution:
Focus on redesigning WEDO’s homepage and features of the Start-Up Resources section to help underrepresented women entrepreneurs easily find the resources they need to succeed.
Original Start-Up Resources section (left) and updated Start-Up Resources redesign (right).
Business Goals
⬆️ Increase the visibility of resources for women entrepreneurs
⬆️ Increase donations to help fund business projects for women by 15%
⬆️ Increase number of sign-ups for leadership programs by 20%
⬇️ Decrease time and effort it takes for users to find information on their website
Constraints
⏳Tight deadline: Due to urgent issues with their website, the stakeholder requested completion within 4-8 weeks
📝 Previous UX designer completed 70% of the redesign: WEDO worked with a designer who created the foundation of all pages. However, the designer couldn't complete the project, so the new developer and I took over
💻Technical constraints due to limited development budget: Limited by time and budget, the developer and I planned simple, and consistent functionalities for the client's WordPress site
⚖️ Compromises and Trade-offs
To meet the stakeholder’s request for a quick project completion, we redesigned the website and conducted user research on the new startup resources section simultaneously. This involved frequent communication, iterations, and usability audits of the developer's redesigned pages each week.
Shared usability audit tables between myself and the developer.
Discover the type of help and resources women entrepreneurs need and identity what has been helpful to them.
Identify the primary goals of women entrepreneurs when navigating resources and websites for business help.
Identify the issues on WEDO's website that hinder women entrepreneurs from maximizing their potential.
Secondary Research - Competitor Analysis
Numerous nonprofits exist with the core mission of helping women start businesses. We analyzed four women-in-business nonprofits with unique, specific goals to determine how they align with WEDO's current online presence.
Most non-profit organizations that help women entrepreneurs have disorganized information, inaccessible interfaces, and overall weak usability.
Primary Research - User Interviews
I spoke to 5 women entrepreneurs to discover how they learned to plan and grow their start-ups.
🗨️ Tell me about how you sought out help when you were starting your business.
🗨️ Have you experienced any challenges? If so, can you share them?
“Don’t get me wrong, I love reading articles and finding resources, but there’s so many categories and things you don’t know that you have to learn. That’s why I found joining founder communities the most helpful because you can just be around other people and ask questions.”
- Amber, Health Tech Founder
“I didn’t join any paid business memberships, I was trying to save money. I basically did everything on my own through googling and research.”
- Sharon, Art School Founder
🗨️ How do you stay informed and up-to-date on industry trends and changes?
“Things change quickly on social media, especially Instagram, and so it's easy to pick up on where things are shifting.”
- Dimonique, Digital Marketing Founder
“I like following influencers because they catch the latest news and break it down into simple terms.”
- Gigi, AI Health tech Founder
“I followed a lot of alumni of Y-combinator accelerators on Twitter, LinkedIn and Discord groups. I also subscribed to TechCrunch’s newsletter.”
- Elle, Collectables App Founder
“There's a lot of stuff out there and it's hard to figure out what actually pertains to you.”
- Dimonique, Digital Marketing Founder
“I found it hard to connect with male co-founders. I have a Y-Combinator account for co-founder matching and most of the matches were with males and they often ghosted me. I found that only 1 in 10 matches were with women.”
- Elle, Collectables App Founder
“There was a bit of a power imbalance between me and my co-founder and he tried to take advantage of that because he had more industry experience.”
- Gigi, AI Health tech Founder
🗨️ Is there anything that you know now that you wish you had done differently earlier in your business development?
“I wish I had surrounded myself with more women founders because even though we are fighting for equality, there is still a lot of things that are not quite balanced.”
- Gigi, AI Health tech Founder
“I wish I had joined a community of art studio owners earlier.”
- Sharon, Art School Founder
“I wish I hired people based on if they could get the job done and their passion. not based on friendship. Hiring my friends caused things to get derailed.”
- Amber, Health Tech Founder
⚖️
Research Trade-Offs:Provisional surveys were proposed to gather information on the problems users may have with the current website. However, due to significant time constraints, this was compromised by conducting five-second tests of the website during usability testing.
Synthesizing these responses through affinity mapping revealed three key themes shared by all participants:
Key Theme #1: Information Overload
100% of participants expressed challenges finding and learning information that pertained to their industry or idea
Key Theme #2: Community
100% of participantssaid that connecting with other women founders and joining communities helped them gain the most valuable and actionable insights throughout their business journey
Key Theme #3: Confidence
100% of participantswished they were more confident, with some mentioning the struggles of gender inequality and challenges posed on women founders that make it harder to be as successful as men founders
Finding the right resources by connecting with women founders
Confidently presenting the value of her idea
Develop a product that makes health fun for young people and fosters community
✨
Motivations:
Implementing AI-driven solutions by keeping up with trends
Interacting with other women founders to learn from their experiences
Educate and network to support women’s health
💢
Pains:
Sifting through the right resources that pertain to her idea
Working harder to educate herself on hard-hitting questions when raising funds
Struggling with confidence in communicating her idea
Difficulties setting boundaries with work/life balance and relationships
Current and Future State Journey Mapping
To demonstrate the value of UX strategy to the client, I created "As-Is" and "To-Be" journey maps from Dara’s perspective. We used Dara's insights to create a future state map of desired outcomes for the redesign.
Current State - Communicate and solidify women founder’s frustrations with WEDO’s website.
Future State - Provide the team with design direction and the value of UX strategy and research.
How might we help women entrepreneurs like Eri and Dara easily find the right resources for their start-ups?
The architecture for other levels had already been approved before I joined the project. Upon reviewing the user research findings for the start-up resources section, I confirmed that the existing architecture was consistent and supported the reduction of information overload.
Task Flows
With Dara and Eri in mind, we determined that the most important task flows for the redesign would be finding a community of women founders to join and finding resources to plan a start-up.
Due to time constraints and the website already built with a desktop-first approach, I sketched desktop responsive designs with multiple layouts and navigation options.
Desktop and mobile low-fidelity sketches.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes and UI Patterns
For credibility and consistency with other business platforms that have good UX, WEDO sought navigational inspiration from the Small Business Administration website's business guide. Our research findings were supported by the navigation.
SBA website UI patterns. Community Resources WEDO redesign.
WEDO wanted to maintain the integrity and recognizability of their brand by keeping their logo while updating their online presence for 2023. They aimed to showcase their commitment to helping women start their own businesses by creating a highly impactful and future-forward website.
UI Library
Navigation
Nested navigation will be available on all pages, except for the landing page. Navigation and information overload are primary pain points for users like Dara and Eri. This accordion will provide them with an exact location without overloading them with information, similar to the SBA accordion navigation.
Accordion components and motion design.
Responsive Cards
WEDO wanted the main UI such as cards to look futuristic with dynamic hover states and consistent design with other changes on pages, from online communities to simple start-up resources.
Card components and motion design.
Buttons
WEDO wishes to use a primary signature blue color with a white stroke for dark backgrounds. Each button will have a subtle arrow to represent an uplifting discovery. Secondary buttons will only be used at the top of all pages for donations, to remind investors and donor users to help their cause.
Through collaboration with stakeholders, efficient development, and my design research and strategy, WEDO's homepage transformed from unusable and untrustworthy to credible, easy-to-use, and informative.
Original homepage (left) and updated homepage (right).
WEDO’s old resources section was incomprehensive and disorganized. While we added more information to help women entrepreneurs, the redesign organizes the information in a digestible way through strategic white space and clear navigation.
Original resources section (left) and updated resources section (right).
Insights from five usability tests revealed the following results:
Success Metrics 🏆
Users recover from 2 or fewer errors
4 out of 5 users successfully completed the tasks
Average satisfaction scale is between 2.5 and 3.5 for content quantity
Satisfaction scale of mostly 4 or more for navigation
A satisfaction scale of at least 4 or higher for overall usability
Key Results 📝
All users made no errors ✔️
All users completed the tasks ✔️
The average score participants gave for content quantity was 3.4, demonstrating that the resources and information were well-balanced ✔️
4 out of 5 users gave a 5 rating on a scale of 1 to 5 for ease of navigation ✔️
The average score users gave for overall usability was 4.2 on a scale of 1 to 5 ✔️
Key Observations and Improvements 💡
While no significant issues or errors came up during testing, we made enhancements based on the sample size of testers that would benefit all users.
Improvement #1: Language and Navigation Clarity
Improvement #2: Clarity for Filtering and Community Badges
🌐 Final Prototype
WEDO places a strong emphasis on supporting women founders at the core of their mission, aiming to be a central hub for all the resources needed to start their businesses.
Start-up resources landing page to clearly lay out essential steps, communities, and help specific for your big idea.
Easily search and filter for communities and resources right for you, with tags pertaining to those organizations.
Go-step-by-step through the start-up essentials for your business’s success.
1. Balancing Business and Technical Constraints with User Needs.
The project had many needs and constraints to balance. The website's technical and usability issues were severe, so the business had to prioritize a tight deadline with a small budget to meet the needs of their mission's core users. This required frequent communication and collaboration with the team and user participants at every stage.
2. Secure Stakeholder Buy-In Early with Active Collaboration and Research-Based Decisions.
Initially, the business was uncertain about the necessity of UX research and design due to their tight deadline. However, I advocated for their users and demonstrated that the research deliverables would not only be beneficial in the short-term redesign but also in the long-term iterative process. The interview outcomes and current versus future state journey maps convinced them that UX was important.
Start-Up Resources Redesign Next Steps and the Future🔄:
1. Publish the Redesign.
While developer hand-offs were completed for the start-up resources section, the overall website redesign continues to be in progress before the new redesign replaces the current published website. I offered to stay in touch with the team as development continues and to extend my timeline for them as needed.
Made with Bullet