PROJECT:
MARIE CLAIRE AUSTRALIA RELAUNCH
ROLE:
DESIGN LEAD
PROJECT OBJECTIVES:
As a flagship masthead for Pacific Magazines, marie claire Australia was the first of the Pacific Magazine brands to be redesigned and relaunched with a mobile site.
The objectives of the project were:
Release a site for mobile and desktop
Retain the base design aesthetic to ensure a strong brand presence
Improve user experience
Ensure ongoing innovation and scalability
Meet all key business, sales and partner requirements
PROBLEM STATEMENTS:
There is no existing mobile site
Content structure is too limiting
Site performance is slow
Key stakeholders & partners are feeling under-serviced with the current site
The marie claire desktop website prior to redesign not only suffered from a dated aesthetic but many of its UI elements made for a cumbersome user-experience.
As a result, much of the rich content was not being seen by users as it was not easily discoverable.
DESIGN RATIONALE:
Due to my previous experience with Pacific Magazines, I was already confident in my visual design approach, thus my primary focus was to improve the UX and UI of the site.
My design rationale was:
Create a flexible and scalable site was adaptable across devices
Provide UI solutions to ensure content was easily discoverable
Improve UX through thoughtful and measured design decisions
Respectfully showcase marie claire brand whilst remaining true to the Yahoo7 styling
Ensure all business, sales and partner requirements are met
"The new site has delivered everything and more. It IS The perfect fit for A prestigious brand."
- Alex Main, Senior Product Manager - Travel, Lifestyle and Entertainment, Yahoo7
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS
One size fits all
One of the greater UI challenges for this project was the varying image orientations and specifications. Due to the predominantly fashion and beauty-centric content of marie claire, much of the image collateral was of portrait orientation, whereas the Yahoo7 network had traditionally catered for landscape orientation only. In order to combat this, I created a UI that accommodated a broader range of scenarios that could easily adapt to both orientations, across all devices.
The result was not only a more flexible format for producers to utilise, but it also saw a positive influence on user engagement.
By adapting the UI to fit the specific content available, a greater diversity of content could be surfaced. Through this modification, it quickly became evident that the use of rich visual collateral was a key performance driver for user engagement, and ultimately resulted in a significant increase in the consumption of this content type.
Finding the treasure
Another key challenge facing this project was the issue of undiscoverable content.
How do we make it easy for users to discover more content?
Simple - by making it easier for them to find.
By creating a content rail, a greater number of content assets could be surfaced - that ticked the first box.
The vertical layout made it easy for users to quickly scan the content. The images provided the visual driver, and the headline supported it.
The initial design saw this module with tabbed content: 'most viewed' and 'latest'. However, later iterations would see the removal of the secondary tab as it appeared users were not interacting with it. Instead, the number of items listed increased - as did user engagement.
But what else could be done to drive user engagement?
By placing the module in a consistent position on the right-hand side of each page, there was minimal need for user training thus keeping the user engaged.
Furthermore, by curating the content based on performance, producers could serve content that was fresh and interesting for the user.
The use of iconography was another method to compel users to interact with the content. Photo galleries and videos always perform well, thus it is beneficial to highlight these assets where appropriate.
The introduction of the right-hand content rail immediately addressed the issue of unsurfaced content. By placing it in an easily discoverable position on the site, there was a dramatic increase in content consumption and still proves to be one of the key traffic drivers for site reticulation.
PROJECT OUTCOMES + ACHIEVEMENTS:
By streamlining the overall UI, production time for the marie claire Australia site build was reduced from 12 months (as per the previous project's timeline) to 2 months, saving the business a considerable amount in resource time and revenue.
From the initial testing up until present day, the site redesign for marie claire Australia has proven to be a great success. There has been a significant uplift in user engagement both on desktop and, of course, mobile. The fact that this uplift has sustained itself for more than 12 months in market is testament to the UX of the site design
"I would really like to thank Hiona, from Yahoo design, who pulled the look and feel of the site together on brand and on deadline"
- Jackie Frank
Publisher/ Editor - marie claire Australia, Pacific Magazines
Source: Yahoo! Data Mining -Digits (AU IPS) 2013/14/15, uplift based on: monthly average (UU or PVs) of 6 months prior launch vs. monthly average of 6 months post launch