LAUNCHED

Augus 2016

ROLE

Design Lead
Interaction Designer

AGENCY

Planet Argon

The Challenge

When Wheel House approached us, they had a site that worked, but wasn’t what they had envisioned. Weeks before their launch, they pulled the plug on the CMS software they were using and quickly found a different partner through ZingFit to handle their studio administration, as well as, power their website.

It got the job done, but it lacked the positive experience they provided in the studio and the functionality they needed for their customers. Some of the issues they faced were:

• Their brand identity was lost in a mundane and uninspiring design.
• First-time users lacked the guidance they needed, and often couldn’t find information to get started (resulting in frequent calls to Wheel House or, worse, abandonment).
• Scheduling felt cumbersome to customers, even regular users.
• The site wasn’t intuitive or straightforward, making time on site longer than was necessary.

1.

My design process was centered around usability and keeping true to the brand.

High-end. Customer-focused. Motivating. Tech-driven. Respected. Trusted. Simple.

Bold imagery coupled with a clean layout not only makes the message clear, but more importantly, makes it easy for customers to find the information they need and allow them to meet their goals (ie. I want to reserve a bike in this class). We partnered with a third party platform, to find solutions that worked for the needs of the studio as well as the business needs of Wheel House

2.

Once agreed on the workflow I prioritized content starting with the homepage. The homepage organically becomes a snapshot of the entire site, from who Wheel House is, what they do, how one could join (either with an upcoming class or buying a package), and more.

From the homepage, I worked on top-down content focusing on the audience and the user needs, whether it’s to on-board and provide one area to get all information, or provide a regular customer with their accounts and schedules.

3.

One issue we heard from customers was that retrieving account information was a series of unintuitive steps. Getting to this information required a user to select Account Info from the header, which would then take them to an account page, then they’d use the page navigation to get to the information they needed.

To address this, we designed a way for a customer to get a quick peek into their upcoming classes and remaining balance right from the header. By doing this, we could ensure once they logged in, they could view this information at a glance from any page, and not lose their spot or have to travel down a series of links.