Case Study ‣ UX Research & UX Design
Improving Product Discoverability and Enrollment Rates at General Assembly
A clunky course catalog confused potential students
Background
General Assembly, a pioneer in education and career transformation, offers in-demand courses in coding, data, design, and more, available in different formats. However, with its long list of options and no way to easily compare, the course catalog was confusing for prospective students. This poor user experience resulted in a high bounce rate and lost revenue for the business.
Project Objective
We wanted to redesign the course catalog to improve product discoverability. With a user-friendly catalog, prospective students could better understand their options, and make more informed decisions based on their goals, schedule, and learning preferences.
By improving the user experience, we aimed to decrease the website's bounce rate, and improve the conversion rate for consumer and enterprise businesses.
My Role
As the lead UX designer on this project, I led user research and created design solution of the new product catalog. My collaborators included a UX Writer and a Product Marketing Manager.
A Glance into the Process, Methods and Artifacts
User Research (Discovery)
Goal: Understand the business requirements, and user needs and challenges.
Activities:
Conducted stakeholder interviews to understand business needs and opportunities.
Conducted usability tests and heatmap analysis on the product catalog, noting users’ confusion of product categories.
Artifacts: Usability test findings, user stories
Wireframes & Stakeholder Input
Goal: Develop and test wireframes to assess how well the concepts meet user and business needs.
Activities:
Produced wireframes based on initial findings and competitive research, enabling users to explore products by topic, format, and learning preferences.
Collected stakeholder feedback via interviews and surveys.
Artifacts: Wireframes, prioritized list of stakeholder feedback
Design Ideation & Workshop
Goal: Brainstorm ideas and generate concepts based on initial discovery.
Activities:
Conducted competitive research, gathering examples of comparison tools and filters from various brands.
Led a workshop with a cross-disciplinary team to inspire and shape the design concepts.
Artifacts: Inspiration board
Designs & User Testing (Definition)
Goal: Create high-fidelity, interactive prototypes to test with end users and stakeholders.
Activities:
Repeated usability tests with the new design, making improvements to product taxonomy, layout, and product card details.
Conducted product language tests to validate and refine the copy.
Produced final designs for hand-off.
Artifacts: Final designs, new product taxonomy and marketing messaging
User Testing & Key Learnings
User Testing: A Closer Look
As I had done during discovery, I conducted usability tests to assess users’ understanding of the product categories in the new product catalog.
Working with an UX Writer and Product Marketing Manager, I also assessed product taxonomy and language using a closed card sort and a cloze test. The objective of these tests were to learn what words or phrases were the most or least clear, and see if the product categories were clear and distinct overall.
Key Learnings
Usability and product language testing on high-fidelity designs revealed the following insights:
Users struggled to differentiate between product categories, highlighting the need for improved product taxonomy and language.
Users still spent time scrolling to compare product categories and classes, calling for a layout that avoids excessive scrolling.
A card sort and cloze test revealed which words and phrases were most and least clear to users.
By mixing research methods and testing multiple times, I ensured the final design solution was user-centric.
A closed card sort to see what words were clear or unclear, and if categories were distingusible.
A cloze test to assess comprehension of the product descriptions
Impact
The new product catalog successfully improved prospective students' ability to find and understand the value of each course. Feedback indicated that the new filtering system reduced overwhelm and made the search process more user-friendly. This improvement is reflected in users' remarks such as, "I liked how easy the filters were to use. This makes it much less overwhelming."
An improved user experience consequently increased leads and enrollments. The revamped UX/UI design of course catalog boosted enrollment and revenue by ~$700K annually for the consumer and enterprise businesses.