Empathizing, Crafting, Streamlining
Solutions That Work For You
The Kabbalah Centre, Int.
The Process
From Starting Point To End Product
Digital Workshop Center (DWC)
UX Design Project 2023
with Instructor Chris Criak
The Kabbalah Centre International, renowned as one of the leading authorities on the wisdom of Kabbalah in the 21st century, became an exciting venture for me. With a background in marketing and a passion for all things spiritual and personal development, I eagerly dove into the challenge of www.kabbalah.com as my inaugural UX Design project.
Completed within the comprehensive framework of UX Design discovery, this process revealed a more in-depth understanding of how vital it is to prioritize our users, customers, or, in this case, students’ experience at every stage of growth. Having a keen awareness of our audience is undeniably the most fundamental cornerstone for achieving business growth and success. It’s our natural impulse to jump into the fun of creating, but it’s more imperative that, whatever our goals, we start with clarity in knowing for whom we are creating.
Upon reviewing the original website, there are several missed opportunities apparent. In the realm of digital marketing, enhancing brand leadership, generating more leads, and increasing brand awareness could be achieved through clearer messaging, particularly on the homepage. The excessive emphasis on CTAs is a concern, especially considering the absence of a defined user journey for building trust—a foundational first step for targeted progress in various objectives and initiatives.
Visually, while the brand colors are a strong and positive statement piece, the user interface is boxy and stale. This design reveals little to no personality, character, and voice about the brand. What are the values, impact, and focused intent of The Kabbalah Centre? The answers – not clear.
On a favorable note, quality content is abundant on this site. However, this content isn’t organized or optimized for a friction-free user-first experience, especially for those new to what Kabbalah is and what Kabbalah has to offer.
While recognizing these areas of opporunity, the road ahead for The Kabbalah Centre is teeming with exciting possibilities, particularly with the user experience. By honing in on brand messaging, revitalizing the user interface, and prioritizing a seamless journey for their audience, an enhanced potential for user engagement and audience growth becomes possible.
ABOUT THE BUSINESS
Phase One (Part One)
In the context of this fictional project, the discernible marketing, UI, and UX needs were treated as authentic challenges. Our focus honed in on identifying potential pain points within the business. The overwhelming presence of CTAs, a seemingly absent path for trust-building, and a disorganized content maze inevitably threatens user engagement, bounce rates, and online/in-person registration for any website.
Equally pressing, being a leading authority on Kabbalah in the 21st century yet lacking a brand leadership presence, clear messaging, and a defined path for potential students is a significant oversight.
During the competitive analysis, the spotlight turned toward UX opportunities. What stood out was the website’s wealth of quality content, yet its disorganization could make it challenging for users to identify what was current, relevant, and accessible. The subsequent content audit reinforced this prevalent UX issue, revealing significant duplicate content and a disjointed site map, making it easy for users to become disoriented and challenging to find their way back home.
ABOUT THE USERs
Phase One (Part Two)
In the second part to phase one of our UX discovery, clarity began to rapidly unfold through comprehensive market research, user interviews, persona development, and the identification of critical tasks.
Market research projections for 2070 indicated a significant shift away from traditional religious affiliations, with a surge in the ‘spiritual not religious’ category. Despite declining religious ties, there was a notable increase in spending on endeavors seeking deeper meaning, projecting an 8.7% climb in the devotional product industry to reach 8.3 billion by 2031. These insights prompted critical questions around establishing authentic leadership in a rapidly dividing niche and the outdated approaches repelling this specific audience.
User interviews offered valuable clarity, emphasizing the target audiences high regard for community, transparency, credibility, authenticity, and a healing, impactful purpose. This audience sought not a product but an experience, a sense of belonging, and a purpose greater than themselves. The user interviews emphasized the websites shortcomings, primarily in lacking clarity about their unique spiritual journey and its connection to Kabbalah. One question asked to every user was, “Is there an individual, group, or spiritual/religious organization that has captivated your attention lately?” That resounding answer again and again was, “No.” Kabbalah.com was no different.
We know that users don’t simply buy what a brand sells, they buy what a brand believes, and those same users stay as long that brands beliefs, values, and mission remain in alightment through words, actions, and impact.
Critical tasks became apparent as this pivotal theme emerged. Users were searching for clarity, not only in their own lives but also in the spiritual brands they buy from.
THE MENTAL MODEL
Phase Two
The second phase of our UX discovery marks the convergence of deep-dive research, data collection, and the crystallization of practical insights.
Users seek comprehensive understanding—what Kabbalah is, its values, its relevance to their unique spiritual journey, and whether The Kabbalah Centre can meet them where they are, not just spiritually but also financially. Additionally, they inquire if The Kabbalah Centre is a community where they can feel at home, contributing to something greater than themselves.
Considering Kabbalah.com has such a wealth of content, the challenge became streamlining this content into its most simplified and accesible form. Our focus landed on clarity and accessiblity, extending beyond the homepage, encompassing the entire site to ensure a consistantly familiar and fluid user experience. Utilizing various visual models while keeping the user-first experience priority one, an umbrella of organizational framework began to take shape: about clarity, impact clarity, path clarity, financial clarity, and connection clarity.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Phase Three
In phase three of our journey, we meticulously crafted the website’s layout, combining all the information we’d gathered to create an optimal user experience. While maintaining the formatting, where possible, of the original site, we simplified paths of discovery, streamlined content, and embedded dropdown menus into the primary and child pages. Our main focus, however, was on establishing trust from the outset, showcasing the latest and most relevant content, alongside impactful initiatives on the homepage. We prominently featured video content and podcast information. This process, while challenging, was immensely gratifying as we organized this multitude of content and collected data into a framework for a user-first experience.
TESTING
Phase Four
In phase four, we conducted both quantitative and qualitative analyses to refine the user experience. Quantitatively, we discovered that users navigated to their desired destinations in unexpected ways, highlighting the flexibility and intuitiveness of the website’s structure. Our primary goal was to ensure users could efficiently reach their destinations, regardless of the path taken—and they succeeded!
Qualitatively, we were delighted to find a significant increase in favorable feelings towards The Kabbalah Centre and the overall user journey with the new prototype. Users provided colorful insights into their experience, highlighting improvements from the original site and additional features recomendations to enchance their experience futher.
In response to user feedback, we implemented several revisions to improve usability:
- We added dropdowns to the primary menu for a more familiar navigation experience, particularly for the ‘Start Where You Are/Can’ options.
- We included brief descriptions for options in the ‘Start Where You Are/Can’ sections to aid newcomers and provide clarity for those familiar with the content.
- We expanded on complementary resources (e.g., ‘Our Vocabulary,’ ‘Torah Portion,’ ‘Scanning Chart’) in the ‘Start Where You Are/Can’ sections to provide more accessible reference guides, particularly for beginners.
- We combined overlapping secondary menus in the ‘Start Where You Are/Can’ sections to streamline the user experience, maintaining consistency, simplicity, and inclusivity in the website.
These revisions aimed to enhance an already engaging user experience based on prototype feedback. These revisions also align with our goal of creating www.kabbalah.com that meets users wherever they are in their journey.
Creatively Designed
Given the unique nature of your business and brand, you deserve services that are crafted to suit your specific needs. As a result, the pricing for each project will vary. With this in mind, I provide a range of pricing options and flexible payment plans, all designed to accommodate the diverse requirements of each of my clients. After our initial consultation, we can then create a pricing plan that is carefully crafted to meet your individual needs.
Created To Fit
Get In Touch
Wherever you are in your professional journey – beginning, middle, or taking things to the next level – I’m looking forward to meeting you there. Schedule a free consultation.