Testberichte
Product comparison platform for consumers.
Testberichte is one of the largest online platforms in Germany for product comparison, test reports, reviews, and technical data to help consumers make informed purchasing decisions.
ROLE
UX/UI Design & Branding
Project Management Mentoring
TIMELINE
Sep. 2020 – June 2022
WEBSITE
PRODUCT DESIGN TEAM
Michael Altenburg – Head of Product
Olia Volha – Senior Product Designer
Lennart Hefler, Stefan Doll – UX Research
Julian, Anastasia – Working students UX/UI
Polina Sogolov – Brand Specialist
My Role
01. Product Optimisation
Improving various aspects of the product to enhance its performance, user experience, and overall success in the market. Working closely with stakeholders and within cross-functional teams to ensure design feasibility and overall alignment with business goals.
02. Rebranding
Crafting and incorporating new brand personality within the company structure and product. Co-managing and ensuring that the new branding guidelines are sustainably integrated and followed.
03. Collaboration & Mentoring
Integration of a seamless workflow between UX and Communication teams. Mentoring and supporting junior designers and the marketing department.
Problem
Space
PRODUCT
Despite having an online presence for the past two decades and providing various consumer content, Testberichte lacks overall recognition among users, leading to slower-than-anticipated growth and a lower number of returning users for the product.
MAIN PAIN POINTS
01 Lack of brand awareness and recognition
02 Overall traffic declining
03 Lack of growth in user retention rate
04 Poor mobile performance
CASE STUDY
Enhancing ranking & bringing clarity.
TIMELINE
February – March 2022
CHALLENGE
To integrate editorial content into the product page to enhance its visibility on Google search, thereby helping users in their product research. Mobile-first approach.
SOLUTION
Improving user experience through header redesign following the "mobile first" approach while addressing business goals and main user pain points.
TEAM
A cross-functional team including me as a UX/UI Designer, PM/SEO, Editor, and Head of the Product.
Lean UX & Collaboration
UNDERSTAND
The hypothesis that redesigning and adding some editorial content to the page header may have an overall positive impact was approved in the very first user research.
CREATE
At this stage, we created various design iterations while communicating the thought process and strategy to the stakeholders and quickly testing some ideas with our end users.
VALIDATE
After validating our design ideas, we moved to a well-defined pixel-perfect, and polished version of the prototype, to be tested with our end users via several remote A/B tests.
Prototyping & Testing
PREFERENCE TEST
This quick test showed us that the users prefer the UI concept with the product name and product details placed above the image, and the offer boxes before the editorial content.
A/B TESTING
The A/B Test to get in-depth user feedback about the current state of the product page and the interactive prototype with slide-in navigation in the first-view area that allows reaching product information without going all the way down the page.
CONCLUSION & FOLLOW-UPS
Next, we ran on-site A/B tests (mobile and desktop) to see possible KPI changes, which were not too exciting in the beginning. Over the next few weeks, we adjusted desktop and tablet interfaces according to the new design. A few minor changes were implemented to increase user interaction with the most valuable affiliate links.
The Solution
The final design was applied to all product pages following new branding guidelines.
CASE STUDY
Crafting a fresh brand personality.
TIMELINE
June – December 2021
CHALLENGE
Create and implement cohesive new branding guidelines keeping the awareness of the highly data-driven product.
SOLUTION
Setting goals and addressing the weak points to create a strong new branding language that suits the company mission, vision, and expanded targeting.
BEFORE & AFTER
One of the most challenging in the design process was the constant alignment with business and SEO requirements: how to organically redesign the product without changing the website structure.
Strategy Alignment
WORKSHOPS
In the remote workshops, we practiced tasks that helped the team and stakeholders focus on strengths and weaknesses, goals, vision, personas, and competitors.
VISION, MISSION, VALUES
The vision, mission, and values are the three most important parts of branding because they are going to guide every other decision while the brand is evolving.
USER PERSONAS
Besides including the existing targeting, we were aligned to expand the product vision and make it more inclusive for better product UX and product marketing.
New Brand Language
LOGOTYPE & SYMBOL
We created various use cases for the logo including the strong, eye-catching symbol that plays an important role in brand recognition.
TYPOGRAPHY
To optimize reading and navigation on the text-heavy platform, while making purchase decisions, we decided to stay simple and clear using sans-serifs.
ICONS & ILLUSTRATIONS
Here we set up some basic guidelines for further creation: they need to be cohesive, inclusive, tell a story to a user, and upgrade the overall experience.
BRAND GUIDELINES
In this classical brand book, we described in detail all the brand elements and how to apply them in specific use cases.
DESKTOP
The main goal was achieved: the online platform gets a refreshed look and feel with high attention to detail and overall clarity.
Learnings
This very dynamic and challenging project became a way for me to get to know the team and get familiar with the complex SaaS product eco-system and its customers. Incorporating Agile UX principles into the process of product design while shipping valuable experiences to customers, collecting their feedback, and repeating the short design and development cycles.