Overview
Within six months, Wrestler Nation's site traffic declined by 40%. As a freelance contractor, I was hired to interpret the issues that caused the decrease in traffic and create a better user experience.
Process
User Interviews
I met with people in the wrestling community to understand their comfort level with technology and their reactions toward the WrestlerNation.com. I talked to parents, coaches, wrestlers, and people who have a vested interest in the wrestling community. From these interviews and analyzing web metrics, two key areas needed to be addressed.
1) Improve Information Architecture
The structure of the main navigation was broad and shallow, which caused problems as new pages or categories were added over time. It became extremely difficult for users to navigate because the navigation was not grouped into intuitive units, plus the current design could not scale.
2) Facilitate Shared Knowledge Easily
Wrestler nation's objective is to facilitate shared knowledge, resources and foster connections between coaches and the wrestling community. Encouraging the use of social media tools to promote knowledge transfer would strengthen their position to educate, learn, and expand their networks online.
These inputs were further analyzed and drove my design directions.
Design
Constant interaction with the client was important throughout the design process. Key scenarios/stories from several users perspectives, such as new visitors and users contributing content (ie. photo/video gallery and blogging) were created to inform the client exactly what information and key functionality is needed. These key experiences were further sketched into refined into detailed interactions and wireframed. Visual comps were presented to the client for feedback and a development and release timeline was produced once the project scope was finalized.
