Building Dreams Since 1989D. D. Constructions is a construction company in my hometown Nagpur, India. I created a responsive website for that company. This page describes the entire UX and UI process for creating the responsive website. You can visit the website here.
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My RoleCustomer Insights & IdeationI began the design efforts by gathering all the necessary data from the stakeholders. I conducted customer interviews and the observation sessions. I analysed the data and created a strategy to create a meaningful user experience.
Design, Execution & ValidationI performed the user research, mocked up interactions and prototypes and created the final UI for the website.
SEO & Social Media StrategyTo reach out to potential customers, we decided to perform SEO and Social Media activities. I searched for all the high value keywords, created HTML meta tags, titles, descriptions and search engine friendly content.
On-Going SupportAfter launching the website, I am providing constant online and customer enquiry support. All the email enquiries goes through me.
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The StoryOnce upon a time...I connected with the owner of the D. D. Constructions company in my hometown Nagpur, India. At that time he was not able to get new clients and he was looking to expand his business. He was building 3 apartment buildings (24 units) to sell. To continue smooth operations he needed to sell the apartments.
After discussing the issue and understanding his business, I decided to help him get more customers by creating a responsive website. I started by understanding the problem. So I created a solutions agnostic problem statement and discussed it with the CEO. |
Problem StatementHelp D. D. Constructions company to increase it's customer base and expand the overall business. |
Customer InsightsCaters To Financially Wealthy CustomersThe company constructs high end residential apartments for high income people within 20 mile radius of the city. So their customer base is high earners looking for a house or an investment.
Most Of The Customers Are CouplesMore than 85% of the customer base are couples who wants to purchase a house rather than investing in the property. Couples come together to inquire about the apartment and makes decision together. Less than 15% of the people come by themselves and buy the property for investment.
Customer Inquiry Happens In 5 StagesA customer asks different types of questions at different stages. Owner observed that there are 5 different types of questions people mostly asks at different stages of decision making.
Agents charges 1.5% for referring customersIn past most of the customers have come through agents. These agents charges 1.5% of the apartment cost. This is a big amount the owner has to pay to get the customers.
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Brainstorming IdeasI started looking for different areas where we can get more visibility. The owner I and waited all the different options to get more visibility. Out of these options The owner was already using newspaper advts, pamphlets and banners.
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Overall Market In The RegionAfter deciding to create a responsive website, I understood the overall residential constructions market in that area. To my surprise I found out that there are 120+ construction companies in that city. Most of them have their own websites and they have accounts in consumer websites like Zillow in India.
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Best Players In The RegionIn my search I found out that there are four big players in Nagpur, India which have dominated the market. These 4 players have their online presence, and have ties with government officials, and with multiple banks.
I checked these companies websites and found out that there is a tremendous scope for usability improvement. This exercise gave me a confidence in my design process. |
Observation & User InterviewsI presented all my findings to the CEO, he was highly impressed by my progress. We decided to speak with a handful of customers and to conduct a five day inquiry session at the peak hours of the business. I collected all the data and analysed the information using mental model. From these mental model I created personas.
Mental ModelsThe data collected in these 5 days sessions is presented in the mental model below. The website is designed keeping these stages in mind. This was the most useful model for this website creation. It helped us address the most important questions frequently asked by the users.
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The PersonasAccording to the mental model, customer feedback and stakeholders interviews I created a couples persona(Sanjay and Uma) and an individual decision maker person persona - Ravi. I presented these personas to the CEO and we decided to design keeping their goals and frustrations in mind.
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Execution StrategyAfter analyzing all the data and creating personas, I started thinking about the execution strategy. There were multiple options to create a responsive website
Website CreationI weighted all the options for website creation. I made a Pros and Cons list for creating website using HTML/CSS, Wordpress, and Adobe Muse or buying template from marketplace. Out of these options Adobe Muse was the best option considering "Good-Fast-Cheap" strategy.
RoadblockAfter 3 weeks of living in India, I had to come back to US. So geographic distance and time difference were the biggest roadblocks. The CEO and I co-ordinated online to maximize our efforts.
MetricsTo keep track of the overall progress and check the health of the website we decided to use website clicks, daily website visits, facebook page likes, and change in the number of daily inquiries within next 6 months as the metrics for the overall success of the projects.
Goals AchievedThe CEO and I decided that the goal of the website will be achieved when the number of inquiries will increase within the next 3-6 months.
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Interaction & PrototypingInformation ArchitectureBased on the mental models I decided to go with the below mentioned simple and effective information architecture. It captured all the data required by the customers to make a decision.
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Paper SketchesIn my search for finding a good responsive template I checked multiple website layouts. Due to there limitations to present the necessary I created my own layout, providing the best user experience.
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WireframesI created quick wireframes for these 4 pages. I presented them to the CEO and we discussed pros and cons of each sections. I presented my rationale for each and every section and we decided to go with the following wireframes.
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UI Design DetailsLogo designI checked their branding and decided to create a nice logo for the company. I wanted to capture the essence of best quality, beauty and geometry. So I came up with the below logo design. This logo exactly represents the company's brand.
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ColorsGenerally people do not get excited when they hear about construction business. My mindset was to use exactly opposite colors which will present the mindset of a fun, lively company. Orange is one of the most fun colors plus it is the color of caution and construction equipments are of orange colors so I decided to use orange as accent color and dark blue and silver as primary and secondary colors.
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TypographyI explored different typefaces and found Kreon as one of the typeface that best represented our design intention. So I used Kreon with different font size.
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Final DesignThis is how the final responsive website look. You can visit at - ddconstructions.in
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Prep & LaunchAfter completing the design, it was time to prepare for the launch. I performed keywords analysis, created content for the website, incorporated Analytics tools and created social media accounts.
Search engine optimizationI found out 10-15 high power keywords that are being searched in Nagpur, India. I incorporated them in the content. I also created titles, meta tags and optimize HTML according to W3 standards.
AnalyticsI weighed pros and cons of different analytics programs to implement for the website and decided to use Google Analytics. Google Analytics proved to be the best one for our purpose and it is completely free to use.
Fail fast & make better productsBecause of the Geographical distance and remote presence, I decided to launch and see where users fail rather than performing user testing. I asked the CEO to keep me informed about any complaints users have about the website. So far we do not have any complaint.
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ResultThe launch was a success. Within the first 3-6 months of the launch we have doubled the daily number of inquiries. Currently only 1-2 in each building is left to sell from 24 units. We get 10-15 website visits daily and currently we have 168+ and growing facebook followers. Freshly graduated engineers or subcontractors started trusting the brand so much that they sent us resumes to work with the company.
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Lessons LearnedIn this project I gained a lot of skills, to capture the essence of the project, these were some of the skills I wanted to highlight.
Capturing emotions through mental modelsAfter collecting all the necessary information from the customers, I looked for different UX methodologies to get the best present the data. I learned about mental models and implemented them for this project. Because of these mental model I provided the best possible solution for the problem at hand.
Learning HTML, Wordpress, Adobe MuseWhile considering different execution strategies. I learned HTML/CSS, Wordpress CMS and Adobe Muse. Till today it helps me create rapid prototypes and present it to stakeholders. This is one of the hugh learning I got.
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