I was both the project manager and a UX designer for this project. I worked with another UX designer and two software engineers while building this website.
Results
Since the launch, client acquisition has doubled, with the consultancy securing more projects and partners.
TAYO lives by its mission to to cultivate collaboration and innovation amongst people for positive impact and sustainable change.
TAYO prides in its being run by youth who advocate for a better tomorrow — one where people and planet live together harmoniously and in unity. With corporations and organizations continuing to search for better ways to function in a sustainable and aware manner, TAYO positions itself as the bridge that connects them to the next generation of world leaders, dreamers, & thinkers.
While a network and connections have effectively placed TAYO in the market as a go-to partner, the company struggled to differentiate itself as a consultancy for hire, with people confusing TAYO for its subsidiary non-profits like Kids for Kids PH, Kamalayan, and Habilin. The question of, "NGO or enterprise?" would come up with potential clients and partners. At the same time, the youth aspect of the consultancy also brought a few barriers and hesitation from bigger companies, bringing credibility and reputation into question.
With these in mind, we thought...
How might we make the website digestible and informative enough for potential clients to see the consultancy's credibility and experience, so that TAYO may secure more clients and partners?
Designing the website
Talking to past and potential partners
We wanted to gain an understanding of the behaviors, needs, & motivations of representatives from companies and organizations when considering partnerships with other groups or consulting agencies. By doing so, we could also get more context on the dynamics of their management and decision-making, allowing us to find points to tackle and touch on in the website's design and content. We also made an assessment of how clients understood and perceived TAYO with its current presence on social media, to aid the consultancy in the positioning of their company website.
Some key takeaways we got from these conversations were:
Companies and organizations focus on past projects and quantifiable results from them. This shows them that the agency has followed through with their goals and mission in the past.
Potential clients need to be able to see all services, all projects, and all campaigns in one website or one PDF file — this makes it accessible and easier to do, especially for busier companies.
The way TAYO presents itself on social media currently positions them as a foundation or a non-profit organization, not a consultancy. The website needs to be clear in showing that TAYO is for hire, and is accepting clients for their services.
TAYO popped out of nowhere with its subsidiaries promoting it, so there was a big misconception that TAYO was merely just an umbrella group for Kids for Kids PH, Kamalayan, Habilin, and Retaso. There was no indication at all that TAYO was a creative consultancy and agency, and this needed to be clear in the website.
Our research allowed us to conclude that the potential users of the TAYO website need to be as straightforward and concise as possible. We had to present TAYO as a consultancy for hire through existing projects, past clients, and a portfolio that clients could use to assess the fit of TAYO with a company's campaign needs.
These new insights led us to ask...
How might we set TAYO apart from its subsidiaries, so that the company is seen as a consultancy and not a non-profit organization?
How might we present TAYO's past projects and client work, so that experience and credibility is clearly shown?
Identifying what the website needed
As with most projects, the most difficult part of building the TAYO website was balancing the needs of both the users and the business. Our stakeholders at TAYO brought in a lot of requests and needs that we had to balance out with what we uncovered in our research. We did this by placing said requests and findings on a prioritization matrix, allowing us to identify what to include for this iteration of the website in the short amount of time we had.
Past Projects and Client Work
Potential clients need to see a portfolio, so we created a whole section on the website dedicated to showcasing the past projects and client work TAYO has engaged in since its start. We separated client work from the TAYO projects under the subsidiaries to create a distinction and to avoid confusion, while still showing that these are the things and services that TAYO can do.
Detailed Services
Potential clients were unaware of the different services that TAYO could do, with their perception being limited to the company's event management and execution. To clearly present what TAYO offers, we created a section in the home page that showcases these services on a surface level, in addition to an entire page in the navigation that dives deeper into TAYO's offerings and unique selling propositions.
Social Validation
To add to the credibility of TAYO as a consultancy, we added a section to show TAYO's community of partners and clients, or as they'd like to call it — their Barangay. Our research showed that companies usually look for past clients as part of their assessment on partnerships with consultancies. Together with these logos, another section of the website presents the number of partner communities and social media reach of TAYO to add to the social proof of the company.
TAYO's Unique Selling Propositions
A big question that came from our research was, "What sets TAYO apart from other agencies?" TAYO positions itself as unique in terms of being youth-driven and planet-driven, and we had to communicate that throughout the website. Besides the copywriting spread out through the website, we dedicated an entire section to present what TAYO does differently from traditional agencies and consultancies.
Iterations made after usability testing
The usability tests uncovered problems with the copywriting of the platform, which were easily resolved after speaking more with the stakeholders and the potential users. For example, the "Our Barangay" section initially did not have a description that went along with it, which caused some confusion for users due to the lack of context. We solved this by adding rephrasing it to "Our Community" and adding a short description of who the companies are under the section.
The biggest issue we got was the lack of a direct means to request for TAYO's portfolio. Initially, users had to use the "Contact Us" page to request for the portfolio, but a lack of a clear call-to-action to do so caused confusion with our test participants. This issue led us to ask...
How might we aid potential clients in contacting TAYO for its services to guide them into securing TAYO as a consultancy to partner with?
Portfolio Request
To aid interested clients in reaching out to TAYO, we decided to create a separate portfolio request form to allow them to directly send an email with TAYO's needed information. This lessens the friction and steps needed, as clients won't need to manually create an email on a separate platform. The submissions for this form were connected to a Google Sheet and were set to automatically send emails to TAYO's account. We added a clear call-to-action on the hero section and a link to this form in the footer present in all pages to direct users to this page.
Results
After close coordination with our engineers and the deployment of the site to production, we were able to help TAYO gain the following since the website's launch:
Double the original number of secured clients prior to website's launch
More than 10 portfolio requests through the website
More than 40 signups for the newsletter
More than 40 new volunteers for TAYO's subsidiaries
Key Learnings
While we consider the project a success, there were still a few things we could have improved on to work on the website more efficiently:
Align on the goals for your UXR. Diving into interviews without clear research goals would have been very difficult, so it's important to get this done by coordinating with both the design team and the clients asking for the website. What's the goal of the website? With this goal in mind, what do we need to know from the users?
Balance is key. User experience design is about balancing the needs of both customers and the business. This balance is found through constant communication with both parties — finding their needs, their frustrations, and where they intersect is important to creating a successful software. We had a few difficulties at first with balancing both, due to a lack of clear and constant communication with our clients, which leads to the next learning.
Communication will get you to your destination. If it weren't for clear and constant communication, the feel of the website might not have represented TAYO, the information presented might not have been enough, and the content of the website would not be complete. There were difficulties at the start and towards the middle, but we were able to resolve this through a few realignment calls. A product team must learn to communicate with other people outside the team, as this is important in ensuring that everyone's needs are fulfilled.
