Folk2Folk
The problem
FOLK2FOLK is a peer-to-peer lending service that enables local business owners to get a loan from investors. The purpose of their website is to provide information to prospective customers about the conditions of borrowing and lending with FOLK2FOLK, along with testimonies, events and news in local chapters.
The main concern of the client was that the website was not fulfilling the level of customer acquisition due to a complicated navigation system. Furthermore, the website was not optimised to be mobile responsive.
My role
During the discovery phase, I joined this project as a UX Designer to analyse survey results sent to FOLK2FOLK customers and transcripts from stakeholder interviews.
I created personas and put together a discovery deck with the research results to present to the stakeholders. The discovery deck and client feedback informed the design phase where I produced wireframes for desktop and mobile, with a focus on recommendations on information architecture, navigation, acquisition routes and mobile responsiveness.
Research
The process kicked off with primary research with the objective of:
Have an insight into the current customer experience on the website
Investigate if the customers’ goals were being fulfilled when they visited the website
Understand the business objectives
To achieve the goals above a questionnaire was sent to FOLK2FOLK customers and business stakeholders were interviewed. I joined the project after the data collection stage and was responsible for analysing it and writing a discovery report for the business stakeholders.
Among borrowers and lenders, less than 60% classified the website as easy to use and visually appealing. Customers also claimed that they were not always able to find what they were looking for. From a content perspective, customers expressed that they wanted clear and factual information but also to see personal recommendations from other customers.
Following the analysis, I created personas for a lender and a borrower to define their goals, motivations, needs and behaviours. This also led to a revision and improvement of the user journeys based on the objectives of each user group.
Design
The first step was to improve the website’s architecture, so I started by making a sitemap to avoid repetition and make the navigation more intuitive. The improvement in the architecture was reflected in the wireframing stage, as we established a new hierarchical system in the navigation menu on the header. The primary links in the menu are Get a Business Loan, Invest in a Loan and Talk to Us. The rest of the links (e.g. About Us or News) are positioned at the very top of the page with a smaller font size to establish that they are secondary links.
I was also responsible for designing page templates and organising the content. One of the challenges to overcome was to ensure that information was shown clearly and that there were links to other pages for more information when appropriate. Some pages in the website are parent categories to other subpages, for example on Get a Business Loan, users could then access T&Cs or Borrower FAQs. So the solution implemented was to have a secondary in-page navigation, where users would have easy access to other pages in the same category.
The Talk to Us page was the key page for customer acquisition for Borrowers, Lenders and Business Partners. When a user first accesses the page they are asked to pick which type of customer they are, then they are presented with contact options that fit their needs. This would ensure that if a user needed to call a member of staff about getting a loan, they would communicate with the right person.
I made wireframes for both desktop and mobile to ensure that the navigation and page structure was optimised for smaller screens. The menu used for mobile is a labelled collapsible menu at the top of the page that enables access to the key pages on the website.
Takeaways
The questionnaires proved very useful to identify the areas where customers struggled to use the website and identifying patterns due to the high turnover. The interviews with the stakeholders were also valuable in having a better insight into the business goals.
While making the sitemap and the wireframes, I worked closely with the Project Manager at Harvest Digital and the Marketing Manager at FOLK2FOLK to discuss the content organisation and take SEO considerations into the design recommendations. Having regular phone calls and meetings with them enabled me to explore different design solutions but advance quickly through different iterations.