How I worked hand-in-hand with a Milwaukee-based agency to deliver better UX for their client’s B2C site, targeting online appointment conversions.

Opportunity

• Business: increase online conversions (donation appointment bookings)
• UX: deliver a more intuitive, more informative experience to foster both new AND repeat site traffic
• SEO: boost visibility globally, locally and state-wide (Wisconsin), improving rank for critical searches as identified by Jigsaw

The Way Forward

Milwaukee-based Jigsaw’s client BloodCenter of Wisconsin had a core business need to set up their donor-facing (B2C) online experience and content intuitively.

They wanted to 1) improve online appointment bookings, 2) present helpful donation information more effectively for the web, and 3) make the experience (UX) seamless overall. Additionally, they saw that weren’t ranking as well as they should for organic searches critical to the business.

April 2015: Despite some hang-ups with a legacy Oracle system, through some research Jigsaw’s digital strategist and I saw we could knock out some “low-hanging” SEO improvements, and certainly improve UX.

With a clear, comprehensive site audit, gap analysis and priority recommendations all justified by SEO – working with Jigsaw’s strategist to present to the client – together we had a great starting point for a phased implementation approach to their Blood Donation section.

May-July 2015: After uncovering priority site fixes, including significant architectural work and reducing duplicate links, I contained SEO input in a page-by-page analysis, then wireframed the “big-picture” changes to present to BCW using the simple FrameBox solution.

The next step was on-page improvement. I rewrote navigational & body content/copy in an easy-to-use Word doc – including HTML, so it could poured straight into development. I also found a couple great, easy-to-implement (with a little technical know-how) UX solves using the Google Maps API and a social widget to:

• Enhance usability and replace bulky list format
• Improve repeat site traffic
• Encourage social sharing & virality for unique, useful content

In fall 2015, however, the project stalled, as sometimes happens in larger organizations especially… due to lingering technical hang-ups and budget uncertainty over whether Jigsaw or the client themselves could implement the changes.

But as you can see I’ve still got work to show for it. And with a project of this size, the SEO and UX experience was invaluable.