InvestorPlace

Connect world-class investment advice with investors

Project Overview

InvestorPlace.com, a leading investment and financial news site, faced challenges with navigation, slow loading speeds, and limited functionality due to its outdated legacy design, built a decade ago. Customer complaints spurred the company to view this feedback as an opportunity for enhancement. I took charge of leading the design and direction for the website refresh, aiming to address these issues and elevate the overall user experience.

Project Goals

Subscribers

Increase brand awareness across InvestorPlace's products

Returning Users

Less friction, more motivation to return

New Users

Reduce bounce rates and increase page views per session

Results

Within 90 days post-rollout

Total user sessions increased by 15%

Article bounce rate decreased by 16%

New website users rose by 7.7%

Average session duration improved by 23%

Average pages per session grew by 9.3%

My Role

Led the complete redesign and rebranding of investorplace.com. Collaborated closely with internal stakeholders, editors, business analysts, and a third-party WordPress development agency to ensure a seamless transition to a new design and user experience across both mobile and desktop platforms.

User Research
User Experience Design
User Interface Design
Design Direction
Visual Design
Prototyping
User Acceptance Testing

Discovery

Lockdown redesign requirements

In preparation for the redesign, we collaborated closely with internal stakeholders to define specific design requirements. We also audited the existing investorplace.com, focusing on enhancing user experience by optimizing layout, improving navigation, and ensuring mobile responsiveness.

Research

Find user's pain points

To better understand our users' pain points, we gathered feedback from multiple channels: customer service teams, user surveys, and Google Analytics. This enabled us to pinpoint specific pain points, which in turn guided our redesign strategy. Our primary focus was on enhancing the overall user experience and addressing these identified pain points effectively.

User Feedback

User Survey

Google Analytics

Key Problems

Visual hierarchy and flexibility limitations

The website suffered from messy visual hierarchies and lacked the flexibility to accommodate different content scenarios. This significantly impacted pages per session and overall user engagement.

Lack of brand awareness

Siloed products led to limited awareness among subscribers about the full range of products and services offered by InvestorPlace, hindering brand recognition.

Poor user experience with Ad placements

Users experienced frustration with ad placements, particularly with intrusive ads disrupting their reading experience. This issue contributed to a high bounce rate on article pages.

Non mobile friendly website

The website's mobile experience was unclear and did not align with the desktop version, resulting in users struggling to navigate and find desired content. This led to decreased engagement and satisfaction with the site on mobile devices.

Ideation

Develop Possible Solutions

To tackle the identified problems with the InvestorPlace website, we generated a range of ideas and solutions through collaborative brainstorming. After careful evaluation based on feasibility, impact, and user experience considerations, we narrowed down our options to five potential solutions:

Key Solutions

Modern and Consistent Designs

Enhance Visual Hierarchy and Content Flexibility

Promote Cross-Product Awareness

Make the article page better

Seamless Cross-Device Experience

1. Key solution

Modern and Consistent Designs

We unified the brand colors to green across InvestorPlace and InvestorPlace.com to enhance brand awareness. Employing a clean and bold look, we updated the visual identity with a san-serif font and modernized the logo. We aimed to ensure a consistent and welcoming brand experience for all visitors. Detailed interface designs were documented in Figma to facilitate consistency and reusability during development.

Before

After

2. Key solution

Enhance Visual Hierarchy and Content Flexibilitys

Investorplace.com is a content-heavy site. The old site had messy visual hierarchies and lacked flexibility, which made it difficult for users to gauge the importance of different content quickly. Adopting a modular design approach, We improved visual hierarchy and flexibility by implementing various block grid systems. This allowed for logical content grouping, easing navigation for users.

Home Page

We simplified the layout and minimized colors to create a more organized and intuitive homepage. By utilizing containers for content grouping, editors gained greater control over layout and content placement.

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Premium Services Page

The old premium services page did not have enough context to get users to click and purchase. To boost engagement and conversion, we highlighted popular services and provided essential information for quick decision-making, enhancing user understanding, and facilitating sign-ups.

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3. Key solution

Create a Hub channel to Promote Cross-Product Awareness

We aimed to increase brand awareness across InvestorPlace's products by leveraging investorplace.com as a hub site. Introducing user accounts and dashboards enabled subscribers to interact with premium content, fostering cross-product engagement and awareness.

Account Login

Subscribers can directly log in and access their premium products through InvestorPlace.com

Dashboard

We created a centralized dashboard for subscribers to easily access their active subscriptions. With a focus on seamless navigation, the design ensures consistency across all products. Furthermore, cross-product promotion enhances awareness and facilitates the discovery of new premium offerings, simplifying the upgrade process for subscribers.

4. Key solution

Make the article page better

Recognizing the significance of the article page as the most visited section, we aimed to enhance the user experience while addressing ad-related concerns. Although users preferred an ad-free experience, stakeholders emphasized maintaining ad revenue. Our redesign focused on improving page speed, content hierarchy, and minimizing intrusive ads.

• We conducted a competitive analysis and collaborated with developers to ensure minimal impact on page load times while modifying ad placements.
• Inline popup ads were replaced with inline lazy loading ads, ensuring smoother display as users scrolled, reducing disruption.
• The lower right corner ad was transformed into a sticky ad, enhancing visibility without overwhelming users.

These enhancements resulted in a 22% decrease in average page load time and a 16% reduction in bounce rate for articles.

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5. Key solution

Seamless Cross-Device Experience

With mobile traffic accounting for 58% of site visits, addressing mobile navigation issues was paramount. Users struggled with unclear navigation and losing their path on mobile devices. We focused on providing a consistent experience across all devices, ensuring the site is fully responsive and easily navigable, mirroring the desktop experience for enhanced usability and engagement.

Final design

Clean and Bold Look

The comprehensive site redesign revitalizes the InvestorPlace brand with a clean and bold aesthetic. This refresh delivers a cohesive and modernized user experience across the entire platform.

Results

Following the site improvements, heatmap analysis revealed frequent interactions with the login button in the header section, indicating enhanced user engagement.

*Within 90 days post-rollout, the average article page load time decreased by 22%, and the homepage load time saw a notable reduction of 39%. Additionally, the article bounce rate decreased by 16%, indicating improved user engagement and retention. Other Key indicators of user engagement also rose:

*Source from 10up.com