I helped to refine, test, finalize and deploy a redesign of a core Avvo page that led to significant conversion wins at a critical time for the company.
My very first accomplishment at Avvo was in service of the Profile redesign that shipped in Q1 2017. The Avvo Profile is a key component of the company's offering--as ~97% of all US-barred attorneys have a page detailing their background, abilities, reviews, and contact information. The Profile is a key step of most consumer-to-attorney contacts that come through Avvo, and the most valued aspect of our site for our attorney partners.
Two years of qualitative research showed Avvo that they were not doing a good enough job helping provide our customers with the information we knew they were seeking when evaluating a lawyer. Following a responsive-web refactoring of the site, it was clear consumers struggled to find the data they were looking for on attorneys and their lack of success was manifested in the conversion and bounce rates for the page.
Our UX goals were to improve the user's ability to complete core tasks, improve finability of relevant info, and create a better platform for iteration and optimization.
Credit is absolutely due to my peers that initiated this effort before I joined Avvo and provided a solid user-centric foundation. Building on that, I was instrumental in carrying this project to completion and brought to bear my skills in visual design and IA to make the design as good as could be.
I learned from my UX teammates and I took the lead in finalizing the UX vision for the page, focusing on helping users navigate the various content types and arranging it in a more comprehensible way. I was point for communicating it with our development team, creating and staying hands on with each project ticket for every page component. I raised the quality bar by insisting on high standards, but remained flexible and accommodating--making real time adjustments with our developers when we hit the inevitable roadblocks. I was also a successful partner with my UX peers in terms of crafting and telling (to a multitude of audiences) the story of the change--helping our org to understand, accept and appreciate the efforts, and carry that story forward to our attorney business partners.
Our efforts resulted in a 13% improvement to the Profile page's bounce rate, and a 60% improvement to the rate of consumers that contact attorneys through this page. Additionally the updates we made during this effort netted a 2.94sec improvement in the page load speed, aiding in our SEO repair efforts.
We actively helped to evaluate the data outcomes of the initial, major change and help put forward multiple tests throughout the year to optimize performance and customer value. We helped establish a precedent for the quality and quantity of value Avvo should bring to our marketplace going forward.
I couldn't have asked for a better project to immerse myself in the Avvo product and UX team process. I loved being able to roll up my sleeves to precisely define and produce the many necessary designs for the components that make up the Profile page. Getting to roadshow our efforts and help generate support and buy-in for our efforts was a wonderful conclusion to the effort.
Now in further hindsight, I'm particularily proud of how this effort, with it's improved retention and conversion rates (in the face of a severe organic traffic decline) were critical in stabilizing the business and making the eventual purchase of Avvo by Internet Brands in 2018 a possibility.
