Redesigning the Home screen and booking experience
“LSDS Driving School” is a driving school based in Randwick, Sydney established in 2015 by Will, an ex-LTrent instructor who is now 73 years old with over 19 years of driver training experience. His driving school currently employs 3 instructors who cover 80 active students (average daily onboarding of 2 new students).
The student pool comprises of a diverse set of demographic characteristics in terms of age, occupation, ethnicity, and gender.
Challenge
Having more than 12 driving schools in the region where LSDS Driving School is active, the school was facing several issues - particularly the conversion rate on his website and the low number of new students he manages to onboard every month. With high drop-offs in booking experiences, it was identified as a major risk area, both from a revenue-generation perspective, as well as from a usability perspective which I committed to improve.
Goals
1. Improve the conversion rate of visitors booking the trial lessons.
2. Improve the usability of the home screen page.
3. Reduce booking drop-off rate.
Role:
UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer
Duration:
Mar. 2024 - Apr. 2024
Discovery
Quantitative & Qualitative analysis
From the initial interview I had with Will, I understood that his concern relates to the conversion rate on his website and the number of new students he manages to onboard every month. In combination with the data I got from Will, I carried out usability testing to find out whether users could complete specific tasks such as finding the lesson and pricing information and booking a lesson.
Findings:
Only 0.6% of total visitors out of the 1,000 visitors each month made a booking.
High replacement rate requirement and constantly needs to attract new students to replace existing ones.
Trial lesson is the most popular lesson being booked.
Identifying the current problems
With the data findings in mind, I conducted some usability testing to find out whether users could complete specific tasks such as finding the lesson and pricing information and booking a lesson. Getting insights from these tests will allow me to understand what the exact pain points are and how I could improve them.
Difficulties finding information
Too much information and text
Sitemap with irrelevant 17 pages
Inconsistent and messy UI
Long task completion time due to many clicks and scrolling to find the right information
Information overload on lesson page
Difficulty finding the trial lesson
Confusing UX writing
Inconsistent and messy UI
High drop-off rate due to frustration from unclear information and difficulty booking a lesson
Solution
Redesign to improve the experience
I wanted to make sure the following goals were achieved in this re-design:
Reduce drop-off rate and increase conversion rate by:
>Re-designing the entire home screen
>Re-designing the lesson booking experience
New sitemap to include only relevant pages
Reduced sitemap from 17 different pages to 5 pages
Information on the home screen shown in order of importance:
1. Driving School’s location service
2. Trial Lesson Booking
3. Popular Lesson Types + All pricing & packages
4. About the team
5. Student reviews
6. FAQs
Current website
Redesigned website
Narrowed down the lesson types to user’s demand
Clear and consistent UX writing and UI elements
Minimal information to not overwhelm the users
New lesson booking page for easier navigation
Current website
Findings from usability testing
Redesigned website
I conducted usability testing on the redesigned prototype to see if specific tasks were able to be completed without any issues before going further in the process. The participants were asked to complete the following tasks:
Find out about the lesson type and pricing
Book a trial lesson
Here are the findings:
Task success rate achieved 100%
Task completion time improved by 80%
Participants understanding how to navigate the website achieved 100%
Metrics
How we would know that the solution was successful
The final thing I would do before the launch is to make sure we define KPIs that will indicate the success of this solution and the numbers which would be considered a success. If this solution is successful we’ll see:
Increase in conversion rate (Visitors booking lessons)
Decrease in the drop-off rates at checkout
My Takeaways and Learnings
Working on this website redesign project was very exciting as it was my first “real life” project outside of the CareerFoundry projects I worked on. The idea to redesign the website came from my own experience in using the website as a student of the LSDS Driving School. I knew there was so much work that could be done on his website and make Will’s business successful by creating a better website for users. I believe the biggest challenge the website was facing was the overload of information on every page which was unnecessary for the users who simply just wanted to find out information about the lessons and book a lesson. It was crucial to redesign and simplify the website in order to increase the conversion rate and increase the number of active students for the LSDS Driving School as per Will’s objectives.
When I met up with Will to present my solution and the redesign of his website, he agreed with my assessment of his current website and with the proposals I made to improve it.
”Simplicity is key” rule worked for every aspect here: from content and layout to language. Using the same color theme throughout the website, button sizes, and color, and having minimal information to not overwhelm the customers were important. I am confident that the proposed solutions will result in a higher conversion rate, and I will meet with Will again in 6 months time to evaluate the results.