Proving the value of first impressions
In many cases, the page that opens on first launch is the only one users see before downloading a competitor. I saw the Welcome Page as an opportunity to drive user and business goals forward with a principled, evidence-based design approach.
I aimed to
- Use the Welcome Page to drive up product KPIs
- Prove the value of quantitative and qualitative testing in the design process
Qualitative Research
I started by gathering existing feedback, doing a competitive analysis and running a user study to observe users’ first interactions with the product. Then I led brainstorming sessions to develop hypotheses to better engage people.
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- This first page was developed by a marketing team. While it looks slick, the info wasn’t relevant to most users who just wanted to get to The Facebook. It was easily ignored and rife with usability problems.
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- This page looks bare-bones, but it succeeded in getting users to notice and act in a way the original page couldn’t.
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- When we adjusted our goals in a later release, new designs worked to grab attention and communicate different messages depending on the kind of user, ultimately having an impact on the core metrics we cared about.
Prototyping & A/B Testing
I worked with a visual designer and web developer to lead the process of designing, prototyping and A/B testing dozens of webpage variations, created from research-based hypotheses. For major releases, we picked the top designs to localize and ship across the globe.
This iterative, data-driven process has directly driven overall product success, and it continues across Edge onboarding experiences to this day.