Arete UX Research & UI Website Redesign
Arete Financial and Legal Solutions is a financial and legal firm based out of Goodyear, Arizona. They focus on serving individuals and businesses with a comprehensive suite of services aimed at helping the people of Arizona achieve complete financial wellbeing. Our mission was to transform Arete’s online presence into a mobile-friendly and user-centric experience. We aimed to design a website that enhanced the user experience and positioned Arete as a leading force in the digital landscape of financial and legal services.
Measuring Accessibility
We prioritize adherence to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure a comprehensive and inclusive digital space. The design team committed to strict compliance with these guidelines, integrating them into the website's development process from the project's inception. The emphasis was on fostering accessibility as a universal feature, benefiting all users, rather than solely catering to those affected by disabilities.
Insufficient Contrast Ratios:
On key pages such as Home, About Us, and Services, challenges arose due to background and foreground colors failing to meet the necessary 7:1 contrast ratio. This deficiency primarily impacted readability for users of various capabilities, particularly those with vision impairments.
Zoom Feature Disabled:
The disabling of the zoom feature across the site posed challenges for users who depend on magnification for content consumption. Enabling this feature became imperative to broaden inclusivity and enhance the overall user experience.
Text being Too Small:
While not a substitute for the zoom feature, optimizing text size emerged as a crucial element for readability. Recommendations included maintaining a minimum font size of 16 pt across the site. Additionally, inconsistencies in font behavior across different browsers were noted, often resulting from the use of non-web fonts. The studio advised employing web fonts, preferably sourced from Google Fonts, to ensure a consistent experience across diverse devices and browsers.
Redundant Links and Title Text:
Multiple pages exhibited issues with redundant links and title text, impacting content clarity. Streamlining the navigation experience was identified as pivotal for an improved user journey.
Dead Link and Link Behavior:
External links on various pages presented challenges, particularly when failing to open new windows or leading to dead ends. Such issues significantly detract from the overall user experience and divert attention from the site's intended content.
Our accessibility audit underscores the importance of considering accessibility as a best practice and a protective measure against potential legal consequences. The message emphasized that companies neglecting accessibility risk facing legal repercussions if users, particularly those prone to litigation, encounter barriers. Integrating accessibility into the design and development process was positioned as a strategic safeguard against potential lawsuits, aligning with both ethical principles and legal obligations.
Measuring Usability
We recognized the comprehensive nature of accessibility audits in uncovering usability issues. However, they also understood that some aspects might remain undiscovered, so the studio opted to augment the accessibility audit with a heuristic analysis. This combined approach aimed to thoroughly address both identified and potential issues, providing a more nuanced understanding of the website's usability landscape.
To systematically evaluate and prioritize the issues uncovered, We employed Jakob Nielsen's severity scale, which ranges from 0 to 4. This scale served as a heuristic guide, allowing the team to assess the impact of each identified usability issue. The resulting heuristic analysis yielded 11 valuable insights, each categorized and organized based on severity. The categorization ranged from the most severe issues positioned at the top to the least severe at the bottom of the list.
The cumulative assessment of Arete's current site using the severity scale yielded a score of 1.64 overall. This score indicated a minor usability issue, providing a quantitative measure of the website's current state. Rennacker Studio emphasized the significance of this scale, as it not only facilitated issue prioritization but also formed the basis for developing hypotheses. These hypotheses, in turn, served as the foundation for constructing usability tasks and scenarios, guiding the studio in crafting targeted solutions to enhance the overall user experience.
User Personas for Arete
Rennacker Studio developed user personas to represent Arete's clients authentically. These personas, derived from real insights gained through personal experiences as clients of Arete’s and extensive networking with current and prospective clients, served as a guiding compass for a more user-centric design solution.
Persona 1: Individual (or Family) Seeking Financial and Tax Services
This persona, driven by the goals of excelling in an HR role and expanding a real estate side business, faces potential purchase barriers such as limited time, complexity in managing finances, and the need for expertise. Arete's potential solutions encompass their entire services portfolio, including tax, accounting, legal, financial planning, estate planning, and business law. The potential for utilizing every service Arete offers makes this individual a key focus for Arete.
User Story 1:
"As an HR Director, the user seeks comprehensive tax and financial planning services from Arete to manage personal finances while excelling in her job role effectively."
Acceptance Criteria 1:
The user expects an easily navigable interface to access information on tax and financial planning services. The consultation request process should be clear and straightforward, and contact information must be readily accessible.
User Story 2:
"As an individual with a growing side business in Airbnb and rental property investments, the user wants to leverage Arete's financial services to navigate property investment complexities and achieve the long-term goal of expanding the venture."
Acceptance Criteria 2:
The user anticipates information on business financial services to be readily available, with easy navigation to business-related services. Additionally, the consultation process for business services should be streamlined.
Persona 2: Family Seeking Financial and Estate Planning Services
With goals centered on ensuring asset protection and financial stability in retirement, this family persona encounters potential purchase barriers related to a limited budget, complexity in estate planning, and reliance on tax returns for estate planning investments. Arete's potential solutions encompass tax, accounting, legal, financial planning, and estate planning services.
User Story 1:
"As retirees on a fixed income, the family seeks affordable estate planning services from Arete to efficiently secure the family's future without straining the budget."
Acceptance Criteria 1:
The family expects detailed information on estate planning to be easily accessible on the website, including clear pricing or affordability details. The process to request an estate planning consultation should be straightforward.
User Story 2:
"As individuals reliant on a significant tax return to achieve our primary goal, the family desires a tax expert from Arete to help maximize returns and cover estate planning costs."
Acceptance Criteria 2:
The family anticipates comprehensive information on maximizing tax returns, guidance on using tax returns for covering estate planning costs, and an easy consultation request process for tax strategy discussions.
Persona 3: Small to Medium-Sized Business Owner and Entrepreneur
Potential purchase barriers include financial considerations and time constraints for this persona, which encompasses business growth, educational advancement, and community impact goals. Arete's possible solutions are tailored to tax, accounting, and legal services.
User Story 1:
"As the CEO of Lucero Consulting Group, the user requires business and legal services from Arete to facilitate the growth and expansion of the consulting firm, enabling a broader range of services to clients."
Acceptance Criteria 1:
The user expects detailed information on business and legal services, a clear pathway to request a consultation for the business and readily accessible contact information.
User Story 2:
"As someone passionate about community impact, the user seeks Arete's support in legal matters to help non-profit organizations empower underrepresented groups and make a positive difference in the community."
Acceptance Criteria 2:
The user requires information on Arete's support for non-profit organizations and details on empowering underrepresented groups through legal assistance.
Benchmarks for Usability Testing
We delved into the engaging realm of usability testing, a phase where substantive insights emerge as real users interact with the live site. This dynamic engagement with users allowed for identifying genuine pain points, laying the foundation for establishing benchmarks to gauge the redesign's success.
When formulating the usability test plan, we adopted a multi-faceted approach, aiming to evaluate the current site's usability from various perspectives. This comprehensive strategy sought to establish clear performance benchmarks for the redesign. Nine task categories were meticulously identified, each assigned an importance level on a scale of one to five, facilitating a nuanced understanding of their significance.
Simultaneously, nine scope areas underwent a similar evaluation, with an assigned importance scale reflecting their significance. The studio further classified identified issues based on their nature, ranging from suggestions to blocker issues, accompanied by a numeric rating scale from one to five.
In addition to the structured evaluations, Rennacker Studio incorporated a mechanism to capture users' raw externalized thoughts, categorizing them as positive, negative, or neutral. This holistic approach aimed to gather qualitative insights and understand user sentiments, aligning them with relevant task and scope categories.
Upon capturing, categorizing, and prioritizing issues and sentiments, Rennacker Studio could strategically pinpoint focus areas for concentrated efforts. The result was a systematic generation of solution recommendations, transforming what would typically be qualitative insights into quantifiable metrics. These metrics now serve as invaluable tools for comprehending user sentiments, categorizing them effectively, and prioritizing areas for design improvements, thereby enhancing the overall user experience.
Usability Test Results
The research team adhered to Jakob Nielsen's recommendation by conducting usability tests with five users (Nelisen, 2000). This approach, renowned for revealing the majority, if not all, usability issues on any given site, was used to evaluate Arete’s existing website’s user experience comprehensively.
Rennacker Studio identified 47 usability issues from the initial usability tests spanning 17 categories. Notably, 18% were classified as blocker issues, 35% as major issues, 24% as minor issues, 13% as strong suggestions, and 13% as suggestions. The average frequency of each issue was 63%. A significant revelation emerged during the tests, as the blue banner navigation, featuring links to separate webpages for tax, accounting, legal, and financial planning, emerged as the most impactful usability issue. All users encountered some form of error or intense confusion while navigating the blue banner.
A total of 30 comments were collected across 18 separate categories, with 56% of them expressing negativity, primarily centered around challenges related to the blue banner. Additional comments highlighted confusion about estate planning, inconsistent information, and unclear wording. Despite these challenges, neutral and positive comments were noted, particularly praising client testimonials and the abundance of information on the site.
Equally crucial were the quantifiable metrics collected to inform the redesign process. Task performance was measured using task completion rate and task completion time as key data points. The existing site exhibited an 86% task completion rate, but the task completion time was notably high at 69.17 seconds – an alarming duration exceeding a full minute to complete a single task. These metrics serve as a foundation for targeted improvements during the redesign, leveraging the qualitative feedback gathered from users during the usability tests.
Recommendations for Redesign
In response to the compelling metrics derived from the usability tests, insights from the heuristic analysis, and revelations from the accessibility audit, Rennacker Studio recognizes an immediate imperative for intervention in their collaboration with Arete.
Now armed with a clear direction on areas requiring attention, Rennacker Studio is poised to formulate hypotheses for potential solutions. The focus is on addressing blocker issues with a strategic approach. Firstly, the team aims to eliminate the blue banner or, alternatively, ensure that the banner links within a single website, providing a seamless navigation experience. Additionally, the priority is to create consistent forms on each page, responding to user feedback regarding variations in form field displays across different sites within the Arete domain. While this is recognized as a blocker issue, the decision has been made to address it as a separate task later, allowing for a focused assessment of its impact.
The intervention plan involves limiting the number of websites users can navigate between at any given time. Additionally, the "In The News" page is slated to be renamed to something more intuitive, such as "Articles" or "Blog." This change will be complemented by reorganizing the articles page to enhance content searchability and accessibility.
As the team addresses many of the blocker and major issues, it is anticipated that several minor and suggested issues will naturally be resolved. However, a few standout concerns persist. Rennacker Studio aims to discourage the use of abbreviations and, if necessary, ensure that abbreviations are spelled out wherever possible. A revision of the photographic strategy is also on the agenda, emphasizing a focus on people and steering away from a "stocky" appearance. Additionally, efforts will be directed toward clarifying the wording for hours of operation.
This strategic and comprehensive approach ensures that Rennacker Studio's solutions are targeted, addressing critical issues first to maximize the impact on usability, accessibility, and overall user experience.
Research to Redesign
After all that research, the design team can get to work on the fun part! Shifting the focus to designing a new website for Arete, the goal is to make a site that is clear, accessible, useful, usable, and maybe even beautiful.
Asset Preservation Wealth and Tax
This competitor features loads of logos on their banner image. This is likely aimed at increasing notoriety, but frankly, it clutters the design, and at this point, most users are aware that businesses can pay to slate themselves in web articles on Forbes, Fortune, Fox, and other major publishers. Their accessibility rates are equal to Arete’s current accessibility rating of 89%. Their SEO ranks higher at 93%, likely due to the site only having one site for users to navigate between. The design is neither stellar nor poor—it’s a bit cluttered but has a nice visual interest as you scroll down the page. They categorize their services under a dropdown in their primary navigation featuring financial planning, retirement planning, tax services, estate planning, Roth IRA conversions, and Annuity Advisors. They also offer a “free portfolio review” and “Get In Touch” as their primary call to action. The information on the page is informative but not compelling to read — a bit overloaded. And finally, their website is beautifully responsive.
Arizona Tax Advisors
This competitor features a much cleaner design but puts the “contact us” form in the banner image, which feels a bit odd. The strategy here is likely aimed at giving the users what they will ultimately want sooner — and while this likely works for users who have an established relationship with this firm, it would likely feel uncomfortable for the new user.
Their accessibility rates are at 85% — meanwhile, their “best practices” metric through a lighthouse report lists Arizona Tax Advisors at the lowest among all three competitors and Arete combined with an appalling 68% contributed by their use of a depreciated API. Lighthouse includes all deprecated API warnings that Chrome logs to the DevTools Console. There were also browser errors logged to the console, Issues logged in the “Issues panel in Chrome Devtools, and Missing source maps for large first-party JavaScript. Their SEO ranks at 92%, which is still exceptionally high despite the appalling “best practices” score.
The design is the best among the three competitors but still doesn’t knock any socks off. Rennacker Studio feels confident that they can achieve something far greater than what Arizona Tax Advisors currently has displayed, both in aesthetics and performance.
This competitor also categorizes their services in a dropdown on their primary navigation, featuring Tax consulting and tax preparation, Cryptocurrency tax and consulting, Financial Projections and forecasts, LLC Incorporation and restructuring, Accounting and Bookkeeping, and Tax Return Preparation.
Their primary call-to-action is “Pay My Bill,” which is a bit odd for a new user of the site. It’s also a bit unfriendly. The button just takes you to a square portal where it limits an amount that the user must enter. Again, it's very odd!
The information on the page isn’t very engaging, but it is well-designed. They really heavily push their crypto tax services, but once the user gets past the services section on the home page, the design really flounders with awful stock photography and client logos cluttering up the page. The website is responsive. However, there are some overlapping elements.
H&H Accounting Services
This competitor also features a decent design, although it’s a bit text-heavy and lacks engaging visuals, as the photography looks very generic. There are no icons to help ground information visually. Their accessibility rate is 85%, lower than Arete’s currently, and their SEO ranks the lowest among the competitors at 86%.
The design is second among the competitors, but again, Rennacker Studio can do much better! This competitor categorizes their services using a drop-down and two primary nav elements. It is a bit odd but likely helps users find what they need quicker, despite the ambiguous nature of “consulting services,” which appears just to be a catch-all for any service that is not tax or accounting. Meanwhile, the tax services dropdown houses Personal Tax Services, Business Tax Services, Accounting Services, and Consulting Services.
Their primary call-to-action is simply their phone number, as it is prominently sized and stands isolated from the nav bar. The information on the page isn’t very engaging, but it is well-designed. They don’t necessarily push one service over the other, but they clearly have an emphasis on tax and accounting services. Testimonials are nicely organized and clear to filter through.
The website is not responsive, but it is adaptive — however, it looks really awful on mobile with overflowed text and a lack of right-hand margins.
Competitive Landscape
It's worth noting that all three competitors’ design approaches are very different, but something that can truly leveraged during the Arete redesign is that none of the competitors are true show-stoppers with any form of industry-leading design. But something that should be pulled from these competitors is that all three have their services truncated under a “services” navigation tab of some kind.
From this competitive analysis, the design team can compile a features list and prioritize these features based on the data collected from our usability test. This prioritization will clearly understand what must be included on the new website and what should be excluded.
Crafting the Blueprint
The design team dug deep into the creative process of sketching out various concepts to help visualize an array of solution recommendations and lay the foundation for Arete’s website redesign.
With insights from usability tests and competitive analysis, the design team can translate ideas onto paper—or a giant whiteboard. This approach helps explore layouts, navigational structures, and content placements while allowing for quick ideation through various iterations. The goal is to explore options through a divergent lens that can be consolidated through self-editing and peer feedback later.
Writing Content To Improve Engagement, Conversion, and SEO
The attention shifted to the development of content, placing a central emphasis on the creation of engaging and impactful UX writing that will increase conversion and register with Google to help improve SEO.
Recognizing the pivotal role that content plays in engaging users and driving conversions, the designers strategically formulated a set of copy-tone guidelines tailored to Arete's identity in the financial and legal services industry. These guidelines aimed to strike a balance between casual friendliness and industry expertise—ensuring that the communication resonates effectively with the target audience, new users, and search engines alike. Implementing these guidelines into the prototype involved refining the language, incorporating industry-specific terms in a non-jargony way, and infusing a positive and inspiring tone throughout the user journey.
Polishing the Experience
With insights from low-fidelity sketching and content development, backed by the robust insights gathered in the initial usability tests, the design team progressed to developing a high-fidelity prototype. This stage involved infusing the design with a polished visual aesthetic through the use of highly refined graphics. The team leaned heavily into showing the people behind the exceptional services Arete provides through compelling, high-contrast photography while establishing clear paths for the user to follow while using the site. No more blue banners — instead, we’ve opted for a simple and clear navigational layout!
The high-fidelity prototype aimed to closely mirror the final product, providing users with a realistic and immersive experience that we could retest and enabling us to garner valuable feedback on the refined design.
The prototyped solution aimed to bring more detailed and useful information to the user by reducing jargon, organizing content clearly, and leveraging visuals to showcase the impact Arete can have on their client’s financial well-being.
Measuring Success
To gauge the success of the redesign, clear parameters based on the metrics from the previous usability testes were established. Using indicators such as task completion rates and task completion time, the studio has established two clear parameters for success based on the benchmarks established in previous usability tests.
Improving Task Completion Rates
With a baseline task completion rate of 86% from the previous usability test, the goal is to elevate this metric beyond 90%. This metric was chosen due to the near impossibility of achieving 100% from participants with varying mental models around what is “usable.” However, the incrementality of achieving a 6-percent increase in task completion should not be understated as it could still mean the difference between converting and not converting a client.
Drastically Reducing Task Completion Times
The average task completion time in the previous test stood at 69.17 seconds. That’s over a full minute to complete a single task! The design team set an ambitious goal to cut this metric down to less than 20 seconds per task. This bold goal underscores a commitment to achieving a significant improvement in the overall usability and efficiency of the site.
Insights & Achievements
Using the established benchmarks of achieving a greater than 90% task completion rate and less than 20 seconds of task completion time, a second round of usability tests revealed that the design team was able to improve task completion rates by 11%, achieving an average completion rate of 97%. This improvement is phenomenal as it is almost impossible to achieve 100% simply because different users all have slightly different mental models that can generate variances in what is “usable.”
Even more significantly, the designers were able to reduce the average task completion time from 69.17 seconds down to just 5.6 seconds! Which is frankly less time than was even thought to be reasonably feasible. Users experienced significantly fewer issues on the redesigned site compared to the existing one.
In light of these outcomes, it can be asserted that the redesign of Arete Financial and Legal Solution’s website constitutes a comprehensive success in terms of usability. The meticulous testing, insightful feedback, and surpassing of predefined benchmarks validate the efficacy of the design interventions and underscore a commitment to delivering not just a functional but an exceptional user experience to the Arete website.
