Recalibrating Team Hud’s website
Role: Lead UX Design
Client: Team Hud (The University of Huddersfield)
Brief
We need to know why our memberships sign-ups aren’t on par.
Context
Team Hud is a gym/fitness services provided to students and staff at the University of Huddersfield.
Within the organisation I was the designer responsible for all marketing needs. The selling point for the service was that the memberships were exclusively available to students and members of staff of The University of Huddersfield, competitively priced memberships with further reduced prices for students who joined and the gym and fitness service was located at the university and open 24/7.
Task
The initial task was to find out why our conversion rates were low despite having a competitive edge to the other gym providers based locally.
Foundational User Research
Competitors Analysis
The analysis needed to figure out clear strengths of our competitors and features we could onboard to our own business. This info really helped inform the initial pain points with users.
Quantitative Research
Survey
I conducted a survey in which 60 students replied to the following questions.
How often do you go to the gym?
Which gym are you a member of?
Why did you choose this gym? Check all that apply.
Have you now or before considered joining Team Hud?
If yes, what made you decide not to signup? Check all that apply.
Findings
From the survey I learned that our potential customers struggled with signing up for a membership mostly because we did not have an online form for registration. This lead to them signing up to our competitors as it was ‘less hassle.’
Current State Journey Map (User Testing)
I was already aware that the website did not have online registration however, from further digging I also learned that we also had not added the membership fees for the students. To confirm my hypothesis on there not being an online registration feature and lack of information on membership fees being the reason for students diverting to our competitors I performed user testing with our site to validate or inform us of more. The following is the journey map with the outcomes that came forth.
Goals and Motivation
Be more active and physically fit.
Pass the time in between breaks from lessons.
Insights on the journey of a potential membership sign-up.
Context
The student has decided they want to get fit so they look for a gym to sign-up to.
What I learned — during research and testing
Students need a simpler way to register for the gym. They prefer registering online. There also needed to be a way to dictate the information on the website more clearly.
Iteration. Testing. Listening. More iteration. Testing again.
A lot changed from the initial proof of concept, to this version. Further research showed that the research done did not take inclusivity into account. Further research showed that the university enrolled many international students who were not fluent in the English language, so to cater to them I added iconography and a feature to change to websites language to their native tongue.
Result
There was previously no online registering system for staff and now there is. 1 year and 4 months of continuous development and design iteration saw the website released in beta to a select group of students. 5 months after the beta was released, the updated website was officially released.
What worked
The online registration feature was a huge win as it improved conversion rates of sign-ups. Having an agile process with the developer was also key in its success as it helped in realistic prioritisation of how the website should be reconstructed.
What could have been better
Looking back much could have been improved. If I could do it over I would want to research from an inclusive perspective which would broaden the scope of improvement.
