DIGITAL DESIGN PORTFOLIO FOR:
TAYLORSENSE APP
CHALLENGE
Taylor Guitars is the leading manufacturer and brand of premium acoustic guitars in the United States. With an average price-point of $2,500, care and maintenance are extremely important to owners. Extreme humidity, temperature, and impacts are leading causes of serious damage and often require expensive repairs.
SOLUTION
For the Taylorsense app we had the added challenge of a hardware component. The engineers developed a bluetooth enabled data logger module with sensors for humidity, temperature, impact, and battery life connected that was designed and integrated into the standard 9-volt battery box. This gave us the data source we needed to monitor the guitar health.
My north star with any product development is “Be useful. Be helpful.”
We worked extensively with the Taylor guitar repair techs and engineers to model the conditions that would trigger alerts while minimizing false positives and negatives. The last thing you want with an app like this is for it to be wrong or annoying.
The follow on use case to monitoring a guitar’s health is what to do if the guitar does have issues. To solve for this we designed and developed a custom content module within the Drupal CMS system Taylor uses to power their website. This allowed us to develop a single library of support videos, how to articles, and FAQ’s that we could simultaneously publish to both the website and the Taylorsense app via the app API.
PROJECT ROLE:
- Product owner responsible for managing the project team, timeline, budget, stakeholder communication, and goals.
- Led the team, prototype design, visual design, app development, user testing, systems integration, quality assurance testing, and launch.
TAYLOR GUITARS WEBSITE
CHALLENGE
Taylor Guitars is the leading manufacturer and brand of premium acoustic guitars in the United States. But their digital marketing had not kept pace with their success in the music industry. The website was cobbled together with old technology making it a poor customer experience and a bad reflection of the all-important brand. The e-commerce store was rudimentary and not secure and their social media marketing was well behind their competitors. They needed to push forward and extend their premium brand into the digital space.
SOLUTION
I led an in-depth discovery project with all stakeholders in the company including marketing, sales, customer service, human resources, finance, and the executive team. I concluded and made the business case that Taylor needed to build a new enterprise level website from the ground up that would act as the flagship for the brand.
The high $2,500 price point of the average Taylor guitar means that Taylor Guitars is an aspirational brand for most of their audience. The customer journey is long and complex, often taking place over many years with a variety of brand touchpoints between purchases. It was important to keep the focus on helping customers through the buying process by providing useful information, keeping them emotionally engaged, and giving them tools to shop. We wanted to help them find the right guitar for them.
Our strategy was to engage customers with premium quality content on email, social media, print, and events. When they were ready to start seriously shopping the shopping tools on the website were always a click away. This was effective because it addressed customers at all stages of the purchase funnel.
The content management use cases were complex with many different relationships between different kinds of content. The site also needed to support diverse marketing channels such as events, social, print, promotions, content, and e-commerce.
Results
- The new website saw a 47% increase in sessions
- 7% increase in new sessions, 55% increase in users, and a 24% decrease in bounce rate.
- The improvements can be attributed to a more intuitive user experience, information architecture, product presentation, and SEO.
- E-commerce revenue for the new merch store increased 12% compared to the previous store.
Key Features
- Browsing and filtering by guitar features
- Head-to-head comparison
- E-commerce store for merchandise, parts, and swag
- Event locator
- Dealer locator
- Electric guitar custom configurator
PRODUCT INNOVATION
CHALLENGE
With their flagship TurboTax product as well as Quickbooks, Mint, and Quicken, INTUIT is a major force in fintech. But competition is fierce and they know they need to keep innovating new products to maintain their edge.
PROJECTS
ExpensePro
Our goal was to develop a product to help INTUIT acquire small business customers. We interviewed a variety of small business owners and based on our learnings decided that tracking business expenses for taxes was a major pain point we could solve for. We designed and built a working beta version that automatically captured and categorized transactions. Results were displayed on a dashboard where they could be managed and integrated into both Quickbooks and TurboTax.
Other Products
I also designed and developed a prototype of a product to help employees to easily optimize their paychecks for taxes and withholdings by leveraging the personal and financial data already present in the payroll system.
ROLE
- Working in the Research & Development Department as a member dedicated product development teams, I led UX design, prototyping, user testing, and visual design.
TAVARUA ISLAND RESORT
CHALLENGE
Located on a tiny island off the coast of Fiji, Tavarua Island Resort is a luxury resort for surfers, couples, and families. With two of the best waves in the world nearby Tavarua is on every surfer’s bucket list. But competition has been growing and their website was not keeping pace with the growth of their brand and their position as premium luxury resort.
SOLUTION
We worked closely with the Tavarua stakeholders to identify challenges and opportunities for the company. We conducted an audit of the digital marketing infrastructure, looked at quantitative and qualitative data, and talked to customers. We detailed our recommendations in an in-depth strategy document that gave Tavarua a detailed roadmap for their digital marketing. The biggest opportunity was to redesign the website as a mobile first experience and update the visual design to position Tavarua as a premium surf resort. We implemented a new more intuitive navigation that showcased the gorgeous photography of the resort and encourage prospective customers to make a reservation. Internally we developed a library of reusable content modules to empower Tavarua employees to build new pages as needed.
RESULTS
The conversion rate for the lead acquisition form increased by 34%. There was an increase of 56% for mobile, 37% for tablet, and 8% for desktop for time on site. The bounce rate improved by 9%.
PROJECT ROLE
- Led project from client engagement to launch and was responsible for project success.
- Team management, information architecture, wireframes, visual design, web development, coordination with engineering, client communication for deliverables, timeline and budget management.
OPOTEK WEBSITE
CHALLENGE
OPOTEK is an industry leader in tunable laser research equipment. Their products are integral for a variety of scientific applications such as photoacoustic imaging, mass spectrometry, and and spectroscopy. But their website did a poor job of showcasing the products, helping customers find the right product, and converting leads into sales.
SOLUTION
We met with OPOTEK leadership and stakeholders conduct a discovery. We took a deep dive into who their customers were, how they engaged with the product, and the OPOTEK sales process.
From the discovery phase I developed a strategy, budget, project plan, and built a team to execute the plan. The opportunity was to optimize the customer experience by redesigning the website to showcase product features customers cared about the most and cross reference that with the scientific applications the customers were using the products for.
PROJECT ROLE
- Led project from client engagement to launch and was responsible for project success.
- Team building, team coordination, information architecture, wireframes, visual design, web development, engineering, deliverables, timeline and budget management.
RESULTS
- 53% increase in sales leads.
- 64% increase in sales.
