Website Design and Development for Korean Language Academy
Steve Kim
English Book Ladder
Increased New Visitors by 125% in just 3 Months
A South Korea-based English language academy needed a complete overhaul of its website to resolve several key issues such as inconsistent design layout, lack of responsive design, inability to update content, which prevented the website capable of supporting their marketing campaigns campaigns.
Role:
UX/UI Designer and Developer
Timeframe:
3 months
Research and Discovery
Site Audit
I conducted a site audit to assess the website’s usability, ensure consistency across its design and content, and identify key areas for improvement.
- Layout was not mobile-responsive.
- Content was poorly organized and outdated.
- Mixing Korean and English language on the same pages.
- Images were not optimized.
- Design was outdated, and lacked consistency.
Competitive Analysis
Conducted a competitive analysis of three competitors websites located within a 10-mile radius of EBL.
- Value Propositions: Clear service descriptions and philosophies.
- Weaknesses: Lack of mobile responsiveness, overwhelming content layout.
- Areas to Emulate: Updated class/program information with schedules and curriculums
- Improvement Opportunities: Websites exclusively in Korean, missing the opportunity to engage English-speaking parents.
Analytic Analysis
Reviewing a period of 12 months, I compiled and analyzed data focusing on the website's performance, specifically tracking new user visits every quarter and the number of contacts originating from the website.
- Averaged 127 new user visits every quarter.
- Averaged 19 contacts originating from the website.
User Interviews
Conducted during class sessions on a recorded Zoom call.
Quotes:
- “Website is confusing”.
- “The website is not good for mobile phone”.
- “It looks old”.
- “The information is not helpful, and not organized”.
Defining Our Users Needs
To achieve our goal of understanding and empathizing with our users, we undertook the following steps:
- Synthesized research data to pinpoint user pain points.
- Created personas based on these insights.
- Developed a sitemap to serve as the foundation for our website design strategy.
Concept for the Final Design
Following several discussions with stakeholders about the website's design, we identified key criteria to guide the final design draft:
- Incorporate the new brand colors and fonts.
- Achieve a design that is simple, professional, yet retains a playful touch.
- Tailor the content's tone to appeal to both mothers and business professionals.
Content Model Design
To effectively outline the content model's structure and guide the design and development of components and layouts in Contentful's CMS user interface, we focused on:
- Creating an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)to visually represent the structure of the content model.
- Using the ERD to inform the design and development process, ensuring a cohesive and intuitive user interface for the website and Contentful's customizable platform.
Project Launch Successes
Following the launch of their website, the English Book Ladder team initiated a marketing campaign to advertise their upcoming classes and programs through the website and across various media channels. Three months into this effort, our analysis revealed a significant increase in engagement: success.
- New website visitors surged by 125%, from 127 to 287.
- direct customer contacts via the website increased by almost 50%, from 19 to 35.
These outcomes were particularly encouraging given the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, which limited the range of services EBL could provide. Given these constraints, we unanimously regarded these results as an overall
