Redesign: Ohana Clean carpet
cleaning
Introduction
Embarking on the exhilarating journey of a budding family owned enterprise, OhanaCleanllc is a local carpet cleaning business servicing in Minneapolis, MN. In the spirit of innovation and ambition, our collaboration aims to establish a vision of modernity, efficiency, and personalized service.
Duration
First design & development
Second design & development
role
UX Research, UX Design, UI Design
Webflow Development
Tools
Figma, Webflow, Google Forms
NOTE: I Redesigned this website twice. This case study will focus on the newest design that is currently live.
Problem
As a new business, getting leads can be challenging. Making a strong first impression with a user-friendly online presence is needed to catapult OhanaCleanllc into the spotlight. In the first redesign, we made the site modern and simple but it lacked the warmth of a family owned business.
GOAL
My client, a passionate entrepreneur, and I agreed that keeping a simple modern design was still important but it needed a sense of family at its core especially with the business name being OhanaClean, Ohana meaning family in Hawaiian. To stray away from being too sales focused, the goal is to tell a story and build trust with clear accessible information.
The first redesign shown in the middle, was done without any user research and it shows. It was entirely made by decisions of visuals and client needs. My client came back to me and felt like something was missing and there was. There’s barely information about the process of the job the users will expect and the focus was a giant button to get a quote, followed by a form to fill. While the client really wanted to push for people to ask for a quote, we needed to first, convince people by assuring them that Ohana Clean was a hard-working, trustworthy business to go with. The charm of a small, family owned business can be shown by being more personal. Paying attention to wording and providing ample information of the job, reviews and a real photo from a job was the key. In a design standpoint, the first redesign was supposed to invoke a clean feeling associated to a cleaning service but it felt kind of cold and hard on the eyes. It lacks the warmth of a sense of ‘family’.
Design Process
Empathize
- Competitor analysis
- Survey
- Interview
IDEATe
- Sketch
- Information Architechture
Design
- Lo-fi Wireframes
- Hi-fi Wireframes
Recollect
- Challenges
- What I learned
- What can be improved
EMPATHIZE
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Based off of the competitors websites, I noticed that all competitors liked to jam pack information. Some were very lengthy paragraphs or led to multiple pages and tabs which was a little overwhelming and straining; however, I appreciated that each competitor did blogs to give cleaning tips.
Adding a blog seems ideal but the client stated they did not have time to create blogs and opted out for the time being. Either way, Ohana Clean lacked information compared to the competitors and incorporating a little more information about the process of cleaning to the website without being overwhelming was the takeaway.
SURVEY
INTERVIEW
Conducting interviews with the client and users, there were different needs presented but some similarities that overlapped.
CLIENT GOALS
- Website engagement to quote requests (more leads)
- SEO optimization
- 3rd party integration for job management
OVERLAPS
- Honesty (through reviews and photos)
USER NEEDS
- Clear upfront pricing
- Information about the job (experience level, how its done)
- Not getting taken advantage of by hidden fees or being sales heavy
DEFINE
PERSONA
Vanessa Santos
Age: 58
Location: Urban
Status: Married
Vanessa is a stay at home mother to 2 boys who have been active in sports in their youth and she is going to be a grandmother soon. She has a very busy home life and loves to invite friends from church over and walk her Australian Shepherd to the park. She keeps her home pretty tidy but noticed that her carpets are not the same color that it used to be and there are some stains that won't come out no matter how many times she’s tried. Vanessa wants to revitalize her carpets for granddaughter and guests from church and wants to find a trustworthy carpet cleaner that provides clear information about the process with fair pricing.
Goals:
- Can schedule a cleaning at her own convenience
- Be provided information about the service provided
- Find real trustworthy reviews and pictures on the webpage
Fustrations:
- Being taken advantage of price and quality of work
- Previously other service type work including hidden fees at the end of the job
EMPATHY MAP
IDEATE
SKETCH
INFORMATION ARCHITECHTURE
LO-FI WIREFRAME
The current redesign includes a lot more information upfront to reduce the need of searching around for it. The About Us tab was removed and included into the homepage since google analytics showed that it was one of the most visited pages other than the home page.
Reviews were later pulled from a 3rd party program that automatically set the design.
HI-FI WIREFRAME
Check out the live page
here.RECOLLECT
CHALLENGES
Working with a client as a freelance UI/UX & web developer was more challenging than I thought. Clients, in my case a small business owner, had a hard time understanding the scopes of designing vs developing. Where my focus has been towards research and design, the client wanted a lot of custom code or 3rd party inclusions that would also link to some sort of business management to gain leads and track forms for their business. In terms of research for this project, it was challenging to find the target audience to give surveys and conduct interviews with considering that I looked for people that were the age of 55+ and have used a carpet cleaning service before. It really gave me insight to the experience of researching a very specific industry and to meet user needs of simplicity with sufficient up-front information.
WHAT I LEARNED
While I used Webflow, a no-code web development site, I realized that it is more similar to coding than designing and that I would much prefer to put all of my attention to the research and design process than developing. Doing this project allowed me to be more sympathetic to the development process when designing in Figma as well as the communication aspect of working with clients, meeting their needs and of course the users needs.
WHAT CAN BE IMPROVED
In the future this website can really benefit from a blog post that would increase SEO which was a concern of the client. Users can also benefit from a blog that provides professional tips and information about carpet cleaning. This can be a great way for users to gain trust of Ohana Clean and be more familiar with their business. Lastly, most users expressed that they would like to see some kind of pricing on the website to get a ball park of what to expect without a form or contact. The client opted out putting any pricing on the website for the moment but is open to considering it in the future.
