Pro-Leash is a leash company that provides high-quality products for owners and their dogs. They are fully made in the USA with some great owners, Don Culp and Matthew Zarrella. These two came to me in need of a site upgrade due to their rising success in their industry.
The company came to me because their previous web designer did not work out. Due to this unfortunate event, they needed a web designer. With my background of UI/UX, I knew that I could help them create a site that was not only designed well but created with their customers in mind. Once we started working together, we were able to make some great improvements to the site that significantly boosted the user experience.
What Was Needed on the New Website:
- Fresh new design aimed towards target audience
- Fully functional checkout cart (Existing one was broken)
- New images for their products
- New products needed to be added to the site
While I was looking at the old site, I found that the checkout cart was not able to shrink down on the phone or tablet. I fixed this by changing the theme of the site to something a bit more stylish for the brand message.
The images on the old site were great but I felt that they could be better. The company’s photographer got some great shots and sent them over to me to use.
The new products needed to inputted and old products needed to be updated to match current prices.
Old Vs. New
Knowing the Target Audience and User Flow
For this company, the target audience is for dog lovers, trainers, walkers, and Professionals such as Search and Rescue. While designing the site, we really wanted to keep this user persona in mind. A customer who wants a great product at a reasonable price. We have added in-depth descriptions for products to ensure that customers know what they’re getting and how to use it.
With this user persona in mind, I knew that we had to get the site to be fully mobile ready and optimized for people on the go. I’m always coming up with ways to make the user’s experience much better. For example, I took product and in-use photos for the new each product line.
When I think of dog lovers and trainers, I know they want to see the product in use. Our KPI’s for these photos were actually located within the ads we put out. On Facebook, Pro-Leash’s clicks and site views improved significantly with the help of these new in-use photos. In addition to these, our new product photos featured on the site were clear and cleaned up in Photoshop for the user’s viewing.All of these new photos were taken by me.
when designing an e-commerce site, you need to know your user’s flow. I use this method 100% of the time when designing a website. For Pro-Leash’s website, I went through and put myself in the users shoes. I even tested the flow with a test candidate before we went live with the site. Creating a product that the user can easily navigate and work through is my ultimate goal for every site that I help to create.
The Wrap Up
To close this out, I would like to say that my knowledge of UX/UI Design serves me very well when designing websites, no matter what company it is. Creating user flows and journey maps are some of the many things that I do to create a user friendly website. Pro-Leash owners, Don Culp and Matthew Zarrella , and their customers have said that they love the website.
Do you have an outdated website? Contact me and let’s get your site where it needs to be!
