Redesigning a Brand Site for 6M+ Users: UX Research, Feature Prioritization, and Building a Scalable Design System

Redesigning a website that serves over 6 million users is no small feat. It's a project that requires a balance between data-driven decision-making, thoughtful design, and a comprehensive understanding of user needs. For this brand site redesign, the stakes were high—enhancing the user experience across a vast user base meant catering to diverse needs while ensuring the platform remained intuitive and efficient.

This blog focuses on three critical aspects of the project: UX Research, Feature Prioritization, and the creation of a Design System that would enable future scalability and consistency across the brand. These elements formed the backbone of our approach, ensuring that every design decision was informed by real user data and aligned with the brand’s long-term goals.

1. UX Research: Laying the Foundation with Data-Driven Insights

Redesigning a site of this magnitude starts with understanding how users currently interact with the platform. We needed to identify pain points, areas of friction, and opportunities for enhancement. This meant diving deep into qualitative and quantitative research.

Key UX Research Activities

• User Interviews: We conducted extensive interviews with a diverse range of users to understand their motivations, expectations, and pain points. The goal was to get a detailed view of what worked well and what needed improvement.

• Heuristic Evaluation: The existing site was assessed for usability issues, focusing on navigation, content accessibility, and overall user flow.

• Heatmap Analysis: Heatmaps and click-tracking data provided insights into where users were spending their time, which features were underutilized, and which areas were causing confusion.

• User Surveys: Surveys helped validate assumptions and gathered broader user perspectives on key pain points.
  
  

Insights from Research

The research uncovered several crucial findings:

• Fragmented Navigation: Users struggled to locate specific information due to disorganized menus and a lack of intuitive categorization.

• Inconsistent UI Elements: There were discrepancies in UI components across the site, creating confusion and diminishing user trust.

• High Bounce Rates on Key Pages: Certain pages, essential for user engagement and conversions, had unexpectedly high bounce rates.

These insights provided a clear picture of the issues affecting user experience and formed the basis for the redesign. We were able to identify the most pressing problems that needed immediate attention, setting the stage for effective prioritization.

2. Feature Prioritization: Aligning User Needs with Business Goals

With a clear understanding of the user pain points, the next step was to prioritize which features would drive the most significant improvements. Given the scope of the project, it was essential to ensure that the redesign delivered maximum impact without overwhelming users with too many changes at once.

The Approach to Feature Prioritization

• Impact vs. Effort Matrix: We used an impact-effort matrix to categorize features and design changes based on their potential user impact and the effort required to implement them.

• Business Goals Alignment: Features that aligned with key business goals—such as reducing bounce rates on critical pages or improving customer retention—were given higher priority.

• User-Centric Focus: User feedback and pain points identified during the research phase guided the prioritization process, ensuring that the features that mattered most to users were addressed first.
  
  

Key Features Prioritized for the Redesign

• Improved Navigation Structure: One of the top priorities was restructuring the site’s navigation to make it more intuitive and easier for users to find what they needed.

• Personalized Content Recommendations: Based on user behavior and preferences, we prioritized implementing personalized content to enhance engagement.

• Consistent User Interface Elements: To address inconsistencies, we focused on creating standardized UI components, which paved the way for a more cohesive design system.

The prioritization process ensured that we tackled the most critical issues first, setting up a solid foundation for the redesign and ensuring that subsequent enhancements would be built on a user-focused base.

3. Building a Scalable Design System: Ensuring Consistency and Efficiency

With a clear roadmap of prioritized features, we faced the challenge of ensuring design consistency across the entire site. Given the scale of the redesign and the number of stakeholders involved, a comprehensive Design System was critical for maintaining uniformity, speeding up the design and development process, and ensuring future scalability.

Why a Design System?

A Design System served multiple purposes:

• Consistency: It provided a unified set of design standards, reducing discrepancies and creating a seamless user experience across different site sections.

• Efficiency: Designers and developers could reuse standardized components, speeding up the design and implementation of new features.

• Scalability: As the brand and platform continued to evolve, the Design System would accommodate future additions without the risk of introducing inconsistencies.
  
  

Core Components of the Design System

• Typography and Color Palette: We standardized the typography and color scheme to align with the brand’s visual identity. This ensured that all elements were cohesive and recognizable.

• UI Components Library: A library of reusable components—buttons, form fields, icons—was created, ensuring that design elements across the site looked and functioned consistently.

• Interaction Guidelines: Guidelines for animations, micro-interactions, and hover states were established to create a predictable user experience.
  
  

Implementation and Adoption

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: We involved designers, developers, and product managers early in the design system development process to ensure buy-in and ease of adoption.

• Documentation and Training: Comprehensive documentation was created, outlining how each component should be used. Training sessions were held to familiarize the teams with the system.

• Iterative Refinement: The Design System was treated as a living entity, with regular updates based on feedback from designers and developers as they implemented the new design.

The Design System not only enabled a smoother redesign but also set the groundwork for consistent, high-quality design as the brand site evolved in the future.

Key Takeaways from the Project

This redesign was not just about improving aesthetics or adding new features. It was about creating a user-focused experience rooted in research, strategic prioritization, and efficient design practices. Here are some of the main takeaways:

1. User Research is Key: Comprehensive user research provided the insights necessary to understand the real pain points and opportunities, ensuring that design decisions were data-driven.

2. Prioritization Drives Impact: By carefully prioritizing features based on user needs and business goals, we were able to deliver significant improvements without overwhelming users.

3. Design Systems Ensure Consistency: A well-developed Design System was crucial for maintaining design consistency, improving efficiency, and enabling scalability across the platform.
   
   

Conclusion

The redesign of the brand site for 6 million users was a complex but rewarding challenge. By leveraging UX research, strategic prioritization, and a comprehensive Design System, we were able to create a user experience that not only met current needs but was also prepared for future growth.

As a designer, the key lesson from this project is that great design starts with understanding the user, prioritizing effectively, and building systems that empower teams to maintain consistency and efficiency. This approach ensures that design solutions are not only impactful but also sustainable in the long run.

If you’re tackling a large-scale redesign or are interested in creating a Design System that scales, I’d love to hear your thoughts or share more about the process. Let’s connect!