With trading platforms becoming more accessible to users all over the world we are seeing an increasing amount of amateur and self-thought traders. Though trading platforms are more accessible the lack of financial and trading knowledge is not. This is why we created Arise Academy. In this project, we focus on creating a platform teaching users how to trade by offering multiple ways of learning including written articles, videos and live webinars. In addition, we provide users with daily trade ideas (signals) which encourages users to remain subscribers. We also ensure the platform is affordable for users worldwide and introduce different price structures based on where the user is based.
My responsibilities in this role entailed user research, concept ideation, aligning key stakeholders on product goals, designing user flows, visual design, prototyping, user testing, incorporating user and stakeholder feedback into design iterations, and quality assurance.
This is a web app project**
Arise Academy is an existing product with several identifiable challenges. The challenges that we faced were: the website was not consistent with the brand which led to the lack of essential information about the service being offered in the website copy.
Another challenge was the result of having the frontend being developed in-house using Webflow. Webflow is limited to the capabilities that are built in its own CMS system but does not allow for this to be exported, resulting in dynamic content not being available. The last challenge that we faced was creating an e-learning platform that offered video and written content in addition to live classes that users didn’t have to leave our platform to be able to attend. In order to achieve the above, we needed to work with 3rd-party companies meaning we had to ensure the visual experience of the user was seamless within the product. The 3rd-party company also didn’t offer the ability to process payments through their platform
We followed a User centred design process
Analysis, Design, Evaluation and implementation
To solve these challenges, we started off by identifying the project scope and requirements through researching the target audience.
NeXarise is a referral-based business backed by an ever-growing independent sales force. This means that about 95% of our customers are referral based. Using the data, we were able to identify that our end-users are between 18 – 45, while our target audience is anyone between the age of 18 - 75 years. We were able to obtain this data through our existing CRM. Based on the user and competitor research that we found, we identified that we needed to create a new colour palette, write new copy and use more suited imagery to properly describe the product. I conducted extensive research into colour palettes using websites such as; coolors.co and dribble for design and colour palette inspiration.
I then followed up by creating several colour palette options which were ultimately decided upon by key stakeholders involved in the project. To optimise the information, I created a copy update that highlighted key features like the 110% best price promise, 24/7 member support, airport lounge access, and hotel credits that could be gained based on the plan the user selected. In order to properly create an aligned collection of imagery, I used platforms such as Shutter Stock, Adobe Stock and Envato, in addition to using Flaticon and similar services for icons. After ensuring the earlier processes were completed, I then started out with low validity prototypes, and once those were approved I progressed to creating functional prototypes and doing full team and user reviews before starting the development stage. We also did A/B testing with key stakeholders on the client-side before finalising the prototype. As the landing page doesn’t feature any of the prices, we designed the package list in a comparison model that highlighted all the features and showed the users which ones were available in their selected plan. As a result, we found that this model worked well for converting site visitors. When we achieved the initial processes, the project was then moved into the development stage. This was process was executed in Webflow. The front-end of the landing page was made fully responsive and includes interactions and background videos towards the website. We additionally transferred the design elements from Adobe XD to Webflow and created a fully functional landing page before exporting the code and handing the project over to the backend developers to complete.
This completed project resulted in a welcoming website with a new and improved colour palette detailed with supporting copy that clearly explained what the product was and who it was for. We were also able to highlight member benefits through copy and imagery. This project in itself was rewarding one in particular given the fact that I had the opportunity to design the UI/UX and develop the front-end. Despite this being something new for myself and the company, we were able to ensure high accuracy of the design on the website leading to us achieving our goal and that of the client
