Responsive Training Services
Overview
GRK9 currently manages their client’s bookings through Instagram. They understand managing bookings through DM’s isn’t sustainable and if they want to grow they’ll need a professional service website to make the booking process easy.
My opportunity to improve their service is by developing a solution for a client with no brand identity while creating a live website for an easy booking experience.
GRK9 (Gianna Romano K9) is a dog trainer located in Chicago, IL supporting their network of clients by offering training, walking, and sitting services for new & existing customers.
Role: UX Designer
Scope: 4-week Sprint
Constraints: Desktop & Mobile Website
Platform: Wix
Results
Role
Challenge
GRK9 wants to improve its booking experience with both current & new clients while creating a brand identity that reflects its business. My approach was to build a professional website comparing local competitors and gather user reviews to develop an intuitive & professional booking website service. Throughout usability testing sessions, users expressed a straightforward service completing the booking process in an average of 57 seconds without any errors. With technical constraints causing the original booking process to be disrupted, an additional page housing individual services added 4 seconds to the booking process while continuing to display its simple and easy-to-use service with no troubles for dog owners.
No Website? No Brand? No Problem
Gianna Romano (GRK9) is a professional trainer with existing clients scheduling dog training, dog walking, and dog sitting sessions. However, GRK9 wants to improve its booking experience with current and new clients while creating a brand identity that reflects its business. Currently, the only method of booking with GRK9 is either via Instagram or word of mouth. They know they want a website but that’s about the extent of their knowledge of how it should look or work.
I want to help GRK9 with its lack of a booking service by creating a solution that works best for them and their clients through a simple and easy-to-use professional website.
A preview of GRK9’s old Instagram account used to manage client communication and schedule booking services
10 respondents answered the question: "How are you booking your dog training services? Select all that apply"
Desktop Websites Poll High For Dog Owners
10 respondents from GRK9’s network completed the survey to determine the following:
What types of dog services are you using?
How often do they book dog services?
Where do they find their trainers?
How are you booking services now?
Determining how dog owners book their services would shape my solution toward developing a desktop website. However, this survey didn’t answer any why’s behind their responses.
People Love Easy, Seemless, and Accommodating Websites
One of the issues I came across in this project was the lack of user interviews. My survey provided only a small size of data to use without revealing dog owners’ behaviors which I hoped to learn more from their responses. Yet, after numerous attempts to schedule interviews, I was unsuccessful in talking to any user.
Instead, I pivoted to my competitors’ customer reviews on Google from my Competitor & Comparator Analysis prioritizing local, national, and highly rated companies to reveal insights I hoped to find from survey respondents such as:
Why do you use this service?
What are your favorite features and why?
What do you prioritize when looking for dog trainers?
“The process is seamless from booking to picking up your dog all clean and beautifully groomed”
Company: Tucker Pup’s Pet Resort
Google Rating: 4.9/5 stars with 626 reviews
Review Analysis: “Book Now” CTA buttons are available on all service pages ready to being the booking process.
“You can tell everyone is an animal lover and cares about what they are doing”
Company: K9 University Chicago
Google Rating: 4.5/5 stars with 411 reviews
Review Analysis: “Meet Our Team” conveys team member’s warm, friendly, and caring approach to their clients.
“The reviews are all in line with their professionalism, candor, and quality”
Company: Found Chicago Boarding & Training Center
Google Rating: 4.9/5 stars with 477 reviews
Review Analysis: The simple 3-color scheme, serif typography, and use of white space reflect a professional website.
When Comfort & Function Combine
I propose highlighting the services the dog trainer offers while conveying a knowledgeable, caring, and approachable feel to make dog owners comfortable in their decision to book effortlessly.
Preview of Affinity Map and user’s reviews discussing their thoughts on dog training services
Group A. Caring → Envoking an approachable, warm, and inviting feel through color scheme & typography
Group B. Accommodating → Providing clients the ability to reach out to GRK9 for any questions or concerns
Group C. Efficient → Reduce page counts, provide all relevant information up front, and a platform to help
Group D. Knowledgable → Highlighting the trainer via an “About Me” section
Listed above are the takeaways from users’ reviews as well as my foundation for GRK9’s website to ensure it delivers an exceptional experience for its clients.
Evolution of Sketches to Wireframes
-
Desktop Sketch #1
Navigation Header with Book/Login CTA
Hero Title & Image with Booking CTA
Services offered
About Me section
Instagram intergration
Contact Me
Footer
-
Desktop Sketch #2
Navigation Header with Book/Login CTA
Hero Title & Image with booking CTA
Services offered
About Me section
Instagram Integration
Booking Section
Footer
-
Desktop Sketch #3
Navigation Header with Book/Login CTA
Hero Title & Image with booking CTA
Services offered
About Me section
Contact Me
Footer
-
Desktop Wireframe
Navigation Header with Book/Login CTA
Hero Titles & Image with booking CTA
Services Offered
About Me section
Contact Me
Footer
The sketches and wireframes are available below for an additional close-up view.
Desktop Sketch #1
Desktop Sketch #2
Desktop Sketch #3
Desktop Wireframe
An Identity That Says I Love Dogs 💛
Primary Color #F7B40B
#000000
#828282
#282828
#BDBDBD
Secondary Color #1D1D1D
#333333
#E0E0E0
#4F4F4F
#FAFAFA
Heading: Oswald
Body: Open Sans
Desktop
Screen Size: 1440 px
Columns: 12
Margin Width: 240 px
Gutter Width: 20 px
Turning Constraints Into Opportunities
I chose Wix as the CMS platform I’d use to build my design for the following reasons:
Both the time & budget constraints of the project
An intuitive dashboard, calendar integrations, and payment handling for easy client management
The flexibility of website builder tools to construct prototypes as closely as possible
However, I ran into an issue when building out the booking process.
Before:
The original user flow I designed based on the free trials of Wix differed from the full-service version.
I was unable to customize GRK9’s services like offering toggles for different types of training services or different time durations.
Before: A dedicated dog walking service with different options like time duration was not possible as Wix only allows one.
After:
I separated every service GRK9 offers and stored them within a categorized page.
This way if users select “Dog Training”, they’ll be led to a page housing additional individual services that best suits their needs.
After: Created a dog walking page hosting each service variation as its own for users to choose from and book.
It’s Serving (Professionally That Is)
Home Page
Service Page
Hi-Fi Prototype Walkthrough
Published Website
*Additional changes made to website by the client since originally published
People Are Saying “It’s Straight Forward”
And the data shows this too with 2 rounds of usability testing results.
1st Round of User Testing
57.33 seconds
2nd Round of User Testing
61.66 seconds
Avg. Time of Completion to book training services with 0 errors committed
In the 2nd round of user testing, users navigated through the new service page.
Though an additional time of 4 seconds between 1st and 2nd rounds, users continued to express their thoughts on how “straight-forward”, “simple” and “intuitive” the process was.
As it stands, the website’s metrics currently stand at…
15+
Bookings
90+
Unique Traffic Visitors
170+
Site Sessions
Before the website, there was no tracking of bookings to base any increases or decreases to determine whether my solution helped resolve the problem.
Gianna & Bailey, the inspiration behind the logo
"Cryin in the club (on a walk)"
Though I did not have any previous work to measure my solution against, the moment I delivered the product to the client, the quote above told me just how valuable this website is for both them and their clients. They also followed up with “thank you so much I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you”, yet their initial reaction filled with excitement for my solution is a testament to my hard work and how lucky I am to deliver for people.
Dedicated For Improvement & Education
This was the first time I developed and published my designs into production for use. I was grateful to use Wix’s platform to help me build my design as close to the prototype I created.
As I sit here reflecting on the journey, I always spot areas where I could have improved instead of celebrating my success. For example:
A question in the survey asking what kinds of services users used in the past and/or currently
The inability to gather users for interviews; next time I’ll discuss incentives with my clients
Assist further in the UX Content Strategy to ensure my client can effectively communicate their service
Don’t be afraid to get creative and add more flair to the website via illustrations or a secondary color
Begin with the mobile design first for a true responsive product instead of being an afterthought
I’m beyond proud and happy for creating a solution I handled from research to development. I look forward to handling a project where I can collaborate with a developer to help build my designs closer to the plan. Though for what it's worth Wix was a pretty good partner in the meantime :)