Southpaw pools is a contracting service aimed at building luxury pools, patios, and decks in the central texas region. looking to revamp their website they turned to Art Institute students to submit bids in winning the privilege of redesigning their marketing website. The class was split into multiple groups to tackle this challenge as a team.
Initial contact with the client included a class-wide interview session to understand why they felt a website was in their best interest. It was revealed that without a website, Southpaw Pools had a 70% conversion rate through word-of-mouth alone. It was specified that our client was looking for something to help him secure conversions. We were given the suggestion of something where prospective Southpaw customers could review past work to have an expectation of what Southpaw Pools could do for them. This put our attention to fleshing out something that can be used as a tool to help secure conversions from those who had little to no familiarity with the brand.
Another point made was the typical price of a project for our client and location of homes where the pools were built, which were around the West lake neighborhood of Austin, Texas, and the northern luxury homes of the Texas hill country. After the meeting, the teams were left to brainstorm. Our team focused on any missed opportunities for questions, exploration of local competitors, and any pain points from the brand itself. One pain point was the identity of the brand; A very weak one if any at all.
After my team collaborated on building personas and gathering inspiration for the project, we broke ground by auctioning off responsibilities to ourselves. The three main tasks were building a style guide, determining the best hierarchy for the site, and determining which technology would best be of use for the client.
Once the sitemap was established, my team began to sketch out templates, and create mockups for prototyping with InVision.
Wordpress was decided as the platform of choice due to it’s flexibility in managing content, and a large community to support it. With a whole community behind it, we thought it wouldn't be much trouble to find help should our client need it. The ability to change content and curate what was shown to potential customers of our client met the criteria for what our client had been planning. The plethora of plugins also meant build time could be sped up to meet the approaching deadline.
The final day of class our team gathered a presentation to show our client how we had planned to solve his business problem of needing a platform that would a.) Provide a way to show potential clientele of what was possible by choosing our client. b.) A product to help expand his business online. This included SEO strategy, Connect potential clients to Southpaw Pools via email.
The teamwork and trust earned by each team member had its own lessons. Sometimes scaling back and focusing on primary function rather than aesthetics are what business maybe looking for. Aesthetics and branding are important, but in the focus of product design, this was something second to the features, functions, and ease of use.
