WEBSITE REDESIGN
How Blockchain Magazine attracted an ardent readership by sprucing up its website
We are spilling the beans about the design process behind Blockchain Magazine's website redesign that resurrected their dwindling reader base. But even better! Through categorical and intuitive design decisions, we ended up stirring up a blockchain fervor amongst new readers! Let's dive deeper into these decisions and the processes leading up to them.
DELIVERABLES
UX Design
UI Design
Development
LAUNCH DATE
November 2019
Blockchain Magazine is an online publication that talks about everything blockchain. They feature news, insights, analysis, and a lot more to dissect deeper into this emerging technology. Their reader base is specifically the blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. But even though the magazine caters to a very niche group of people, this audience is tech-savvy and demands superior experience every time they visit the website. And Blockchain Magazine intended to keep their readership on top of their blockchain game in real-time!
I need a way to develop a new modern skill in my field of work as soon as possible
About
John Doe is an educational consultancy firm, and they had reached out to us for redesigning their website. But, what distinguished this project from a regular redesigning job was the reason behind it. The company planned to launch an Initial Public Offering and wanted to revamp the website to appeal to and attract potential investors.
Personality
Pain points
Technology
This challenge reminded us of a Russian doll that revealed a newer challenge the more we dwelled deeper. So let's quickly go over every challenge that we overtook.
The first challenge that an advanced demographic like the reader base of Blockchain Magazine poses is the pressure of delivering a leading-edge experience. Everything had to be of uncompromising quality, be it the content, its placement, the journey of a reader, or the entire look and feel of the website.
Moving onto the next area of concern. The website was going to be focused on blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. This pool of audience includes hardcore techies and thought leaders. But the web page was also vulnerable to hackers. So security was a looming nightmare for the founders. And our job was to be a step ahead of any mischievous activity and develop a super-secure website and impenetrable.
The website had in place multiple tracking tools, and we had to set them up again as soon as the redesigning job was over. These tracking tools were what gauged the high user bounce rate, and websites poor performance.
Before we were on board for the website redesign, it was already running and hosted about 700 to 800 blogs. The workaround that volume of content and to ensure its fluid transition was a slightly uphill task.
The founders were dead fixed on this website being the one-stop source of information for all things blockchain. And to ensure that this vision translated into reality, they were keen on involving multiple contributors to the website's content. We had this key ask locked in our brains since the day we commenced working on this project.
The ads featuring on the websites and the events were the two primary sources of revenue. We had to ingeniously place ad banners in a way that did not hamper the user experience in any way. And as for the events, the event section needed to be placed in a way that was visible to the readers and attracted their attention without hindering their reading experience.
It goes without saying that every website must be SEO friendly, and we are seasoned in designing such websites. But our client here extremely fixated on this ask and were on top of monitoring the website's performance through their multiple survey platforms.
While our client was keen on catering to an already interested audience, we were keen on choreographing expansion. Our goal was to make the website accessible for the audience that was not already aware of blockchain technology but was intrigued by the subject. To make this possible, we were into the idea of having a section that only consisted of basic information about blockchain and cryptocurrency.
It goes without saying that we aspired to design a seamless user interface for the website. Readable, engrossing, and quality design was a must.
Our team conducted a comprehensive R&D to understand the digital news portal peers. We also discussed the client’s mission and vision in depth to be able to deliver a digital product that met their expectations. To understand the readers’ dislikes and inclinations and to get a grasp of different blockchain centred blogs, we followed a lot of such web pages, online discussions, and relevant books on the subject.
Our designing and product engineering team was tasked with redesigning and developing the entire digital model for the Blockchain Magazine.
During the UX designing of the project, we were focused on planning fluid navigation for the readers. To ensure that we created a mind-map, planning distinct journeys of multiple users.
We then went on to develop prototypical paths to understand the user’s experience of the website while undertaking different tasks. We then moved on to develop wireframes to decide on a basic structure of the website. To make the portal simple and easy to navigate we created pillars of different types of content pieces. We wanted to streamline a reader’s experience and lead them to the stories of their liking without any obstruction. We knew that doing this would improve the bounce rate significantly.
For the UI design,
we built upon the basics of a top-notch UI. Those basics are:
The journey through the website should be simple, logical, and convenient.
The website should add value to the visitors and cater to the purpose of their visit.
The website should be easy to use for users of all levels of tech literacy.
And it went without saying that the aesthetics of the website should consume readers and create for them a positive experience.
And next, we broadened on these four cornerstones to make the website more usable and visually appealing.
We identified the colour schemes and font styles that resonated best with the core audience. We also decided on the type of thumbnails and their placements. We designed an interface whose layout was absorbing and ensured that the background accentuated the graphics and visuals that accompanied different news stories. The clear and legible typography made the information effortlessly readable.
The initial website was hosted on WordPress and we decided to stick to the same platform. WordPress was a consensus choice for our team owing to the following reasons:
Our exceptional redesign job triumphed over all the challenges and setbacks we faced during this project. The client's primary focus was to offer relevant content to their niche audience and post the re-design they say a substantial increase in the website's footfall and a diminished bounce rate! Our innovative way of placing the banner gave it a breath of fresh air. The ad placements were optimally placed. And the entire website looked clean, navigable and appealing.
Soon after the website revamp, the client not only witnessed a rapidly swelling audience but also an expanding list of contributors. More and more authors joined forces with them and took the website to soar new heights. But their team is not the only thing that is flourishing, owing to the placement of the Blockchain 101 section that had a compilation of resources and information around this technology more and more people visited the website to familiarize themselves with the technology.
The client had sought our services for designing and development but we ended up designing a new logo for them as well. Why? Because their old logo seemed out of place with the fresh new look we gave the website, and we were not going to compromise on how the website looked. So, complimentary logo for the client and another feather of perfection on our hates!
Blockchain is a niche subject and not everyone’s cup of tea, so when we started looking for someone to do our website, we wanted to ensure that they would do thorough research on it before diving in. We are so delighted to have stumbled across Zuku, which helped us put up our entire website on time and made it perfect to the T. The new website brought about massive engagement and introduced new readers to the blockchain world.
Blockchain Magazine
WEBSITE REDESIGN
