FarmerConnect: Persona Capturing Homepage
FarmerConnect is a technology company built around a blockchain core, powered by IBM, to trace data traveling through the supply chain in the coffee and cocoa sector.
The “one metric that matters is lead generation”. FarmerConnect wanted to rethink their website structure in order to respond to their audiences’ needs with a story adapted to each of them and thus driving qualified leads, increasing conversion and ultimately sales, with the homepage being the core focus of the exercise.
The Project
The Brief: redesign the website to address the target audience and enable lead capturing to increase sales
For: FarmerConnect
My Role: Lead UX Designer
Tools: Figma, Sketch
Personas; UX Strategy; Wireframes
The challenge:
FarmerConnect is an innovative supply chain start up driven to empower and grow the entire supply chain through blockchain technology. They have deep knowledge of their audience and know that conversations are a driver for business, even more so given the innovative technology and newness of their business. Their website offers generic information, untargeted to the various decision makers’ needs and challenges.
The approach:
First, I started by a stakeholder interview (with CEO and Head of Marketing) to understant the company’s mission, products and goals. I then defined personas to help shape the different messaging and conversations we wanted to create. Finally, I created wireframes as a proposition of the website homepage redesign.
The outcome:
Through conversations with the stakeholders, I defined 3 key areas of focus in order to build a homepage that would answer their need for lead generation and growth: data capture, customer-centricity, solution vs. product focus.
The solution:
Building 4 personas to highlight each pains, challenges and goals was the first step to defining a conversational, personalised and expert homepage. Introducing the company as a partner to solve challenges, for each one of them was also key to build trust, specifically for a B2B start-up.
Personas
With the input of the stakeholders and individual research I created personas to build an understanding of the target audience to help shape the vision for the new homepage.
I created 4 main personas to highlight each challenges and goals. This exercise was useful for me to understand the business but also a great tool to base my recommendations on for the new proposed homepage of the website.
Personas
The Solution
From the conversations we had with the stakeholders and their wish for data capture and consuner-centricity, I wanted to develop user journeys that would be personal, conversational and educational.
The navigation menu was changed to reflect the challenges of each persona, leading to a specific page that would answer their query in a more targeted and personal way. This gives the users the peace of mind that they will get valuable rather than generic information and highlight the width of problem-solving solutions that the company can provide them.
Introducing a controlled-by-the-user contact form with the ability to choose their most important topic as well as the date and time they wanted to be contacted is a good way to drive the users to the best person to contact them back, and for the sales reps within the company to prepare and personalise the approach once the call happens.
The conversational and targeted design is also reflected on the banner below to drive the users to personalised content and solutions. The dropdown menu enables all to understand the width of solutions provided by FarmerConnect but also creates a trusted relationship with the company. They understand the challenges each persona faces and have a solution to offer for each and more.
Final thoughts and learnings
This project had time restraints which did not allow me to do as much research I would have liked. Ideally I would have liked to interview users in order to confirm or debunk my hypothesis on their challenges and goals.
But I was able to bring my expertise in B2B into the UX thiking and strategy, building on past experiences working in B2B start-ups and articulating the proposed choices and positions to the stakeholders, gaining their trust in the process.