Pivot Organizing Website Redesign
A home organizing business helping people go from overwhelmed to peace of mind.
Overview
The goal of this design project was to create a new website design for Pivot Organizing to attract more clients for founder, Valerie Green.
The Problem
A unique, organized and personable website was needed to tell Val's amazing story.
The Result
An organized and responsive website with new brand logo, typography, color palette, and iconography.
Link to Figma PrototypeProject Background
Before working on this website redesign, Pivot Organizing founder, Valerie Green and I were coworkers at Sonos for several years. As a design project for DesignLab, I had the opportunity to work with Val again, and help explore a website redesign and some rebranding for Pivot Organizing.
From the beginning of the project, Val knew she wanted a minimal black-and-white aesthetic to tell her brands story. With a background in architecture, she also wanted the website to have an architectural feel. In this project, I got to work with Val to come up with a brand identity and web design that told her brand's story.
Research Phase
The research goal of this project was to understand what qualities people who hire home organizers look for in a home organizing brand. While Pivot Organizing offers both home organizing and productivity coaching, this research was intentionally focused on home organizing,
Competitive Analysis Findings
Based on recommendations from the client, I analyzed five home organizing businesses.
Organizing brands vary greatly in style from luxury to casual.
Each brand either accentuates the pain point of clutter or highlights the benefit of cleanliness and piece of mind for home organizing.
Some websites make it very prominent to get a free estimate or consultation.
If the website does not show pricing they make it easy to learn what the price is with a consultation.
User Research Findings
Based on three interviews with user research participants with some experience with home organizing and a creative occupation.
The goal of getting a home organizer was usually to make life easier set up an efficient system, and make cleaning and easier. Signing up for a home organizer service should feel easy as well.
The common pain point before hiring a home organizer is that their environment was overwhelming.
Participant's favorite aspect of home organizing was being able to get peace of min and maintain an aesthetically-pleasing environment.
Persona Development
Meet Deborah Day, a busy creative.
She is Pivot Organizing's ideal persona because she is a creative who has lots going on which based on user research and conversations with the client is an ideal client to attract.
Research Takeaways
When identifying user research participants, my client specifically knew her audience was creative people who usually do some creative work at home. When conducting user research interviews with busy creatives, it was clear that mess at home was very overwhelming and a large point of stress. Participants found that the most valuable result of home organizing was how much easier their lives were when their homes were clean and organized.
Participants were often quite busy and so a website that makes it easy to sign up for home organizing services was very important otherwise they would look for an easier process. For Pivot Organizing's website, this meant making it very easy to understand how were was priced, how the home organizing experience would work and how to get started.
Exploration Phase
Based on user research findings, I began to assess the existing Pivot Organizing website and imagine the ideal user journey for Deborah, the ideal persona on the Pivot Organizing website.
Storyboard
In the storyboard to the right, I chronicle a scenario where Deborah identifies a scenario where she needs a home organizer. This process helped identify the home, about, portfolio, process and contact pages as the most important pages to focus on.
Moodboard
Founder, Val Green, had some very clear notes on the kind of aesthetic she wants from her website. She wanted the website to be modern, black and white, and because of her degree in architecture, to have an architectural feel. One of the main design influences for this website were architecture firm websites and architectural sketches:
Exploration Takeaways
The greatest insights out of design exploration for Pivot Organizing was identifying what the most important pages are for people to visit when looking for a home organizing and what kind of visual style will help Val's design and architecture brand come across. The existing Pivot Organizing website had many different pages and so the storyboard helped understand what pages could clearly tell Pivot Organizing's story to new visitors.
Another takeaway from mood boarding was understanding the visual style of Val's website to convey. With hand drawn architecture-inspired illustrations, the website could communicate a human feel that was also thoughtful. With a clientele mainly focused on creatives, the black-and-white color palette of the website layout and illustrations could balance the colorful nature of home photography.
Design Phase
In this design phase, I created a website redesign that matched the thinking and behavior users explained in research when assessing a home organizing.
Wireframes
When designing initial wireframes for Pivot Organizing, the focus was to design a fun, modern and minimal layout that would resonate with the persona and audience.
The previous website design for Pivot Organizing was text heavy and so the focus for this layout was to offer space for Pivot Organizing to tell their story but to make it feel easy to navigate through and add more visual elements to help tell that story.
Wireframe Call-outs
1. Navigation - This navigation is informed by the storyboarding exercise to make it intuitive for visitors to quickly learn about Pivot Organizing.
2. Before and After Photos - One of the most important aspects of the website identified in user research was photography of the before-and-afters of home organizing projects. Creating a layout for large and engaging home organizing photography is important for this audience.
3. Pricing Section - While my client did not want to post exact prices on her site, pricing was very important to user research participants. In this design, the services page explains pricing without disclosing exact numbers.
4. Contact Form - For this contact form, I included more copy to explain how the process works so that users know better what to expect when they sign up for a call. This is specifically because in user research, participants wanted to have a clear idea of when an actual project could start.
5. About Block on Home Page - One important part of Pivot Organizing's brand is Val herself. It was important to include Val's story throughout the website to make the experience more personal and let people get to know Val a bit before they work together.
Style Tile
The Pivot Organizing Style Tile features a new logo offering a simplified version of their previous logo and an arrow on the "v" to signify the life pivot home organizing can offer clients.
The typeface used for Pivot Organizing is Manrope, a clean and minimal sans serif.
The color palette is black and white with a blue-green as the accent color to highlight important call-to-actions.
UI Kit
The UI kit took elements from the style tile and prepared all specifics to the design components to make developing this new design as easy as possible.
Usability Test Findings and Iterations
Key findings and iterations:
Participants did not engage with the about page and did not read content when scrolling in the carousel. Iteration: The about page was redesigned to tell the story in a more engaging structure. (See to the right)
Participants wanted more consistent photography showing organization results. Iteration: Working with the client, we began creating some photography guidelines.
Participants liked the illustration style and understood the architectural themes.
Conclusion - Final Design
After iterating based on usability and client feedback, we reached a final design for desktop and mobile that had a clear flow and let Pivot Organizing tell their story in a compelling new way.
My biggest learnings on this project was how enjoyable it is working with awesome former colleagues, holistic brand design for a client, and storytelling through a streamlined web design.
Link to Figma File
