RealSelf is a cosmetic beauty marketplace ( think “Yelp meets Wikipedia”). Users can use the site to research beauty procedures (both surgical & non) and request consultations with doctors. They can also purchase prescription-grade skincare products through the online store.
IA: Site Redesign
**Note: More details to be provided in presentation deck. The below is a high-level overview.
The problem
Google made an update to its algorithm resulting in increased scrutiny and diminished trust in health sites like ours with both user-generated content and authoritative content. It’s because of this update that our organic site traffic declined by over 70%. Coupled with a site survey (700+ respondents) showing 44% of users cited needs for “improved navigation, search, filtering, and UX”.
The most important pages of our site were buried 4 and 5 layers deep, as seen here.
The new structure greatly simplifies the information architecture and relocates our priority pages near the top.
My Role
We formed a tiger team working focused on tackling this problem. The team consisted of: PM, UX Lead, Engineering Lead, UX Researcher, Data Scientist
As the UX Design Lead, I:
pioneered the redesign for both the information architecture + global navigation
lead and organized brainstorming workshops
developed requirements for new designs
validated concepts through user research
supervised design deliverables by other team members
VALIDATE
I worked closely with the UX Researcher to build out, launch, and analyze tests. The methods we used were: card sorts, first click, tree tests, and usability tests of the proposed design through its multiple iterations.
THE RESULT
In the end, we designed and built 14 new pages and flows to support the streamlined information architecture I created (example shown: All Procedures List page) .
We exceeded our expectations post-launch and have successfully seen organic traffic increase by 50% and list page traffic has been steadily increasing by 22% YoY.
Individual Question Page: Redesign
As a user, you can submit a question about a cosmetic procedure and get personalized answers from real Drs. Each published question is called the “individual question page”. We have ~550k individual question pages on RealSelf. The goals of this project were to: improve performance, increase traffic, and provide a better user experience. As a result of this redesign, organic traffic has increased by 63%, doctor contacts from this page type have doubled, and mobile performance has increased by 17 points.