UX Optimizations for Workforce WindsorEssex—a Case Study

This case study highlights the importance of conducting regular UX audits on your website. Simple UX opitmizations can make a big impact.

Client

Workforce WindsorEssex

Our Role

Design + Build

About This Project

Workforce WindsorEssex is a workforce and community development board whose mission is to lead regional employment and community planning for the development of a strong and sustainable workforce.

The website features over 950 pages of content and sees an average of 68,884 visits a month. The types of users that frequent the site are varied and include: jobseekers, employers, students, educators, workforce boards, and other government agencies.

The Challenge

Rather than undertake an entire website redesign, the desire was to build on the strong foundation that was already in place. Elev8 was tasked with improving the website navigation, reducing visitor frustration and enhancing the overall usability and effectiveness of the website.

To make the most of the allocated budget, we relied heavily on Google Analytics to help identify problem areas. Decreasing rates of returning visitors, page depth and session durations were indicitive of potential issues with visitor engagement and retention.

The site navigation consisted of 4 different layers of menus along with some inconsistent labels and unfamiliar brand terms. Additionaly, the home page included over 70 different links, all of which were resulting in confusion and decision fatigue with visitors.

Through our analysis, we also discovered slower load times, particularly with the home page. This can negatively impact user experience, brand perception, search engine performance and more.

The Process

The process was broken down into the following phases:

The Solution

UX optimizations included:

Before

After

Results

The UX optimizations were deployed on January 5, 2022. With just 30 days since launch, we’re already seeing encouraging KPIs:

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About the Author

Renee Pomerleau is an experienced design and UX professional focused on humanizing technology to improve the world around us.

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