An agency which helps her clients to find virtual assistants (VA)
2
She is offering mentoring to become a virtual assistant.
Brief
Design website(s) which would clearly communicate Kira’s services and therefore attract new clients and customers.
Data gathering
To gain an insight into the problem of hiring and becoming a virtual assistant, I organized an in-person meeting with the client. I prepared a set of questions related to both businesses and aimed to identify the users and business needs.
I recorded the meeting, and later on, when going over the footage, I used affinity mapping to analyze the data, derive insights, and gather the information which would be presented on the websites.
Furthermore, I did market research to identify her main competitors and analyze their communication.
Problem statement
One of the biggest client’s questions was whether to have two separate businesses/websites or have them all connected and integrated into one website.
Based on the data gathered in the conversation with a client, I could see that even though the businesses are very related, the target audience and the business goals are very different, therefore, I suggested approaching it as two individual but related businesses with separate websites.
I defined the problem statements for each of them:
Agency
Small entrepreneurs and businesses don’t have the resources to hire a full-time assistant but still need some help with administrative work ideally from a virtual assistant. Looking for a virtual assistant could be time-consuming and hard to choose the right one when you don’t have previous experience working with one. Furthermore, setting up the cooperation in an efficient way could be more difficult than it seems.
VA Mentoring
There are plenty of personal assistants who desire to have a more flexible work-life balance and be more location independent therefore they are looking into how to become virtual assistants and make it a new way of living.
Persona definition
When creating the affinity mapping, I noticed that there could be multiple people who could be potentially interested in the services of Kira’s agency which could influence significantly the structure of the content on the website.
Analyzing the data, I noticed two stages of needs/awareness potential clients going to go through:
1
First, people need to see the need to hire VA.
2
Then they have to be convinced to hire Kira’s agency to help them to hire the VA.
Saying that I divided the user’s needs into two categories:
1
To hire VA in general.
2
To hire Kira’s agency to do it.
Most of Kira’s clients will be visiting the website through referrals, which means they will already see the need for the VA so it won't be necessary to explain them the benefits of VA in a big detail, and the primary focus should be on communicating of the benefits working with Kira’s agency.
Information architecture – site map
Based on the market research and information analysis, I defined set of topics which are important to be present on the website but don’t necessary have to be a singular page. Next to the content to be present on the website, I identified site map containing the most important topics which potential customer needs to know before hiring Kira’s agency.
Wireframes
Before designing the first version of the wireframes, I created couple of paper sketches with all the information gathered above. It was substantial for the project to dive deeper into the content, so I made suggestions of the texts directly into the wireframes.
Homepage
Services
How it works
About me
Pricing
UI
The client knew quite well what kind of visual style she was looking, so I encouraged her to create a Pinterest board with colors, fonts, and website designs she likes. Based on her preferences, I created the first draft of the homepage from which we could grasp the overall feel of the website, and work further on the other pages.
