Web Design
Used-A-Bit Sales & Pawn
Used-A-Bit Sales & Pawn is a locally owned pawn shop in Fargo, North Dakota who tasked me with freelance redesigning their website.
My Role
Web Designer
Tools
WordPress, Divi, HTML, CSS, Photoshop, Illustrator, Google Analytics
My Role
Web Designer
Used-A-Bit wanted a website redesign to offer a better user experience for its customers with a heavy focus on the mobile user experience. Used-A-Bit also wanted to convert more website users into actual customers that shop and use the services of their retail stores.
Defining the Scope
The Goals
- Redesign the Used-A-Bit Sales & Pawn website to offer a better user experience for their customers with a heavy focus on the mobile user experience. Used-A-Bit wanted to convert more website users into actual customers that shop and use the services of their retail stores.
- They also wanted to attract and lure away more customers from their competition and become the first pawnshop seen in Google search for people looking for pawn shops. We wanted to increase the exposure of the company online through Search Engine Optimization and compliance of all of the latest web standards.
Design Process
Research
- According to Google Analytics, over 70% of the users on the Used-A-Bit website are on a mobile device. This made it clear that we had to make the mobile experience of our site the focal point of the project designing mobile-first and building out to the desktop from there.
- After conducting User Interviews with customers within the Used-A-Bit Sales & Pawn retail locations we learned that customers wanted more detailed information about Used-A-Bit’s services and how they work.
- Users wanted the information to be more organized and categorized to help find the information they desire easier.
- Users wanted quick access to information without jumping through multiple pages and a quick way to find where the stores are located and how to contact them.
Design Process
Work & Solutions
- I sketched wireframes of each layout for the main pages of the site.
- I used WordPress and the Divi Theme/Page Builder to build the site. In addition to pages for their regular services, I created product pages that detail their most popular categories of products to boost the number of keywords they rank for in search.
- A User Interface composed of large circular buttons and Content Cards that easily and intuitively translate to a mobile touch interface.
- We prioritized having the most important services near the top of the page to make that information easily accessible and created quick-link related content cards that show up at the bottom of every page based on what page the user is viewing.
- A single contact page with information easily organized for both stores and a map page to help locate each store.
Project Overview
The Results
- Used-A-Bit moved to the 1st search result when searching for “Fargo Pawn Shops” on mobile devices.
- According to Google Analytics a month after launching the new website we saw an increase in many key metrics. The number of users were up nearly 25% with many of those users being new users. Page views increased by almost 200% and Avg. Session Duration increased by 285%. The bounce rate also decreased from 88% all the way down to an impressive 36%. Clicks and Impressions of the site in Google Search increased an average of 30%.