The Problem

Martin Hernandez owns a lawn and landscape company, and I hired him to redo the landscaping in the front yard of my home. He and his crew did a fantastic job. The problem is that Martin doesn’t have a website, so he relies on word-of-mouth advertising. I offered to design and build a website for him so that he can better market his services and grow his company. His target audience is homeowners in the Denver metro area. The biggest challenge involved in this project is setting MH Landscape apart from their competitors. As the designer, I started the project by doing a “Crazy Eights” activity to ideate on the responsive website.

The Competitive Audit

After ideating on the way people will use the responsive website, I conducted a competitive audit to determine what needs are being met in the market currently. I did a Google search and easily found three small lawn and landscape companies in the same area as MH Landscape. None of them had a very professional brand identity, but all of them had effective websites. Two of the websites features a lot of pictures and were accessible to people with low vision. One of them offered very basic information, while the others featured more detail.

The Initial Designs

I created five paper wireframes for my home page and one for each of three remaining pages. These helped me envision the exact way a user might interact with the app.

The Usability Study

The responses I got from participants in my usability study surprised me. I naively though the responsive website was perfect, but they pointed out several ways to improve it. Their input, which you can see on my affinity map, definitely made the app tremendously better.

Responsive Designs

I used the progressive enhancement process for designing my responsive website. I started by designing a mobile version of my product and then adapted it to fit larger screens, such as iPads and desktops.

Takeaways

Through this process, I really focused on creating obstacle-free paths for users. I listened carefully to my usability study participants’ feedback and identified several pain points in my designs. After removing those pain points, I learned how valuable user feedback is, even on designs that I think are perfect. I also focused on the visual elements in my designs. I worked hard to make the font, colors, layout, pictures, and text work together to make a pleasing design. This allowed me to see the results of a strong focus on aesthetics.

Ideating and Revising

Based on the results of my usability studies, I made the company’s contact information much easier to find. I moved the big pictures on the Lawn Care and Landscaping pages down and placed the lists of services the company offers at the top of those pages. I also added a message ensuring users that the company is licensed and insured. Finally, I added more customer reviews on the review page.