Blended Collective Website Redesign

Project Overview

Blended Collective is an award-winning marketing and brand consultancy specializing in brand strategy, development, and marketing efforts. The purpose of this project was to evaluate and redesign the Blended Collective website to better reflect the company’s expertise, values, and impact.

Background

Blended Collective’s website lacked a modern, polished feel, which impacted its credibility as a creative marketing consultancy. Heavy blocks of text led to excessive scrolling, making it difficult for users to quickly understand the agency’s offerings. The information architecture also needed improvement, as users struggled to find key information easily. The client also requested for an increase in user engagement and introduction of more interactive elements to create a more dynamic experience.

Problem Statement

  • Broke up large text blocks and sectioned content to increase scannability and reduce scrolling.

  • Added interactive elements like hover animations, flip cards, and carousels to create a more dynamic, engaging experience.

  • Redesigned page layouts, such as changing Work page from a single vertical column to a multi-column format.

  • Improved the navigation bar to strengthen the information architecture and make key content easier to find.

Solution

Leading UX Designer

Assisted by Amelia Learner. Niki Moore, Jenny Do, and Olivia Hollenbeck

Role

Research

To inform our work for Blended Collective, we conducted user interviews, usability interviews, surveys, heuristic evaluations, and reviewed website analytics to gather insights and identify key areas for improvement.

  • Identify key decision-making factors for potential and current clients when engaging with Blended Collective.

  • Uncover usability issues that impact navigation and the overall website experience.

  • Understand user expectations for branding, visual appeal, and interactive features.

  • Assess how effectively the content communicates Blended Collective’s values and services.

  • Test and refine the navigation flow to ensure users can efficiently locate key information.

Research Goals

We created a survey to gather feedback on marketing priorities, brand expectations, and partnership considerations. It was distributed to our client’s marketing group, as well as local businesses and public business groups in Ann Arbor and Detroit. Our goal was to understand what businesses — both familiar and unfamiliar with Blended Collective — look for when selecting a marketing and branding consultancy.

Survey

75% of respondents said the most important information they look for on a marketing and brand consultancy’s website are past works, process, and team bios

50% of respondents said the feature that stands out the most on a marketing and brand consultancy’s website is a clean layout

43% say detailed client case studies or work examples immediately build trust and credibility the most, followed by clear navigation and an intuitive layout

  • Visual Design: A modern and aesthetically appealing website is important to users' first impressions and overall trust.

  • Service Descriptions: Users want more in-depth explanations of the services and expertise offered to better understand how Blended Collective can support them.

  • Case Studies and Team Biographies: Seeing past work and learning about the team are major decision-making factors when choosing to engage with the agency.

Key Takeaways

We interviewed users to understand their expectations, pain points, and what they look for in a marketing consultancy’s website. Participants also completed a usability walkthrough of the current Blended Collective site, helping us identify navigation issues, assess visual appeal, and gather feedback on engagement features. These insights directly informed decisions on how to improve the site’s structure, content, and overall user experience.

User Interviews & Usability Testing

Affinity Diagram

After synthesizing the feedback into key themes, we identified several major usability and content issues that needed to be addressed:

  • The website’s design did not reflect Blended Collective’s high level of expertise, affecting first impressions and perceived credibility.

  • Case studies were a major factor in users’ decision-making when selecting a marketing consultancy.

  • Pages were too long, causing excessive scrolling and making it harder for users to stay engaged.

  • Users wanted more visuals, such as charts, images, or graphs, to break up text and better communicate information.

  • Participants had difficulty finding key content, such as client testimonials.

  • There was confusion around the "Work" and "Process" tabs, with users unsure if they led to the same or different pages.

We conducted a heuristic evaluation to assess the usability of the website against established usability principles. Each team member independently identified issues by evaluating the site against key heuristics, helping highlight major problem areas. These insights informed our initial priorities for improving the website’s design, navigation, and overall user experience.

Heuristic Evaluation

Key Findings

  • Vague and repetitive case study descriptions, making role/impact unclear

  • Links resemble regular text and lack strong hover effects, making them difficult to identify and raising accessibility concerns

  • The site lacks visuals demonstrating the outcomes of work and process

Match Between System & Real World

Consistency & Standard

  • Inconsistent button styles, font usage, and link behaviors across pages

  • Variations in case study formatting, with some entries missing “More Case Studies” links

  • Search feature difficult to find and unclear scope (site-wide vs. blog-only)

  • Lack of filtering options to help quickly locate relevant information

  • Confusion between the "Work" and "Process" tabs create uncertainty in navigation

Flexibility & Efficiency of Use

  • Dense text, minimal white space, and cluttered sections (e.g., book ads and Google Review) make site feel overwhelming

  • Imbalance between text and visuals reduce engagement and scannability

Aesthetic & Minimalist Design

Deliverables

Based to our research findings, we created several deliverables to guide the redesign

Based on our research, we developed three key personas to represent the primary user groups engaging with Blended Collective. Each persona highlights different needs, goals, and pain points, helping guide decisions around content, navigation, and visual design throughout the project.

Personas

Primary

Secondary

Additional

To better understand the user experience, we created a journey map outlining how users interact with Blended Collective’s website. The map highlights key actions, emotions, and pain points across each step of their journey. This helped identify opportunities to improve navigation, content clarity, and overall engagement.

Journey Map

Based on our research findings, personas, and journey mapping, we identified key UX requirements to guide the redesign of Blended Collective’s website. These requirements focused on improving usability, enhancing visual communication, and increasing user engagement across the site.

UX Requirements

Based on the updated information architecture, we created a revised site map to organize content more clearly and reduce user friction. This structure ensures that services, case studies, and company information are easier to find and navigate.

Information Architecture

Design & Ideation

Brainstorming & Early Sketches

Before moving into wireframes, we explored different ways to improve the website. Through brainstorming exercises and quick sketches, we mapped out ideas for improving navigation flow, reducing heavy text sections, and introducing interactive elements like carousels and hover animations. These early explorations helped us prioritize layout changes based on user needs.

With initial ideas mapped out, we moved into creating low-fidelity wireframes to begin structuring the updated website layout and testing key changes in navigation, content organization, and interactive elements.

Lo-Fi Wireframes

Throughout the design process, we conducted iterative testing to gather feedback on early wireframes. Based on user input and stakeholder reviews, we made several refinements to improve navigation flow, content clarity, and engagement across key pages.

Iterative Testing & Improvements

To guide navigation and ensure a smooth user experience, we mapped out a wireframe flow showing how users would move through the key sections of the redesigned website. This helped us validate the site structure early and align content priorities with user needs.

Wireframe Flow

User Testing

To measure the impact of our design improvements, we tested a total of 12 participants. Six participants tested the original website, and six tested the redesigned version. Each participant completed the same six tasks, which included navigating the site, locating contact information, and identifying the site's core message. This structure allowed us to directly compare user performance and evaluate how effectively the new design addressed key usability issues.

Brainstorming & Early Sketches

72.9% Faster Task Completion

This highlights clear improvements in how quickly users could navigate, find information, and understand the site’s message.

Final Design

The final design of Blended Collective’s website addresses key usability issues while better reflecting the brand’s expertise and creative identity. Content is now easier to navigate, visually engaging, and supported by interactive elements like carousels and hover animations. Testing results confirmed that the redesign significantly improved task completion times and overall user satisfaction.

Brainstorming & Early Sketches

After Final Design

Results & Impact Summary: The redesign led to a 72.9% faster average task completion time across all usability tests. Users found the site easier to navigate, clearer in messaging, and more visually engaging. Client and user feedback confirmed that the site now better reflects Blended Collective’s expertise and brand identity.

Client Handoff: After completing the final designs, we provided Blended Collective with detailed design specs to ensure a smooth developer handoff. We also outlined next step recommendations for implementation, including finalizing the brand style guide and conducting additional usability testing after development to ensure continued alignment with user needs.

Reflection: Throughout this project, I learned that clients may not always have a fully clear vision of what they want — and part of the designer’s role is to help them uncover their true goals through research, testing, and collaborative discussion. I also realized the importance of balancing user-centered design with business needs like SEO and content strategy. Designing a beautiful experience is important, but ensuring the site performs well and supports visibility goals is equally critical. This project strengthened my ability to guide clients thoughtfully, prioritize user needs, and approach design more holistically..