Aura

ISSUE: Poor performance & CMS headaches

SOLUTION: Replatform to improve performance, development speed and content management.

The first thing that stands out from a technical point of view is the poor performance of the website. Fortunately, there are a number of easy wins here to improve the situation.

Switching to a server-side rendering (SSR) solution (as opposed to client-side rendering, or CSR) is the obvious approach here and will bring huge gains in terms of both site speed and SEO. React is currently being used, though it is in CSR format meaning the site speed is extremely slow.

Major issue

The loading animation that plays between each screen load will be a key contributor to poor UX, poor performance (and therefore poor SEO) and bounce rate. There isn't really an excuse for this (unless you are providing intensive cloud based software in the browser) so it needs to be addressed.

Two standout CMS platforms are WordPress and Craft, both of which will solve your content creation issues alongside huge performance gains. Either of these systems provide the ability to create the front-end display for the user, though a future consideration may be to go headless and do all the template rendering in a separate solution.

RISKS: Any time you migrate a website to a new platform you are faced with risks such as data migration issues, website downtime and systems integration problems. It is essential to obtain all documentation from the development agency around the current solution, including the hosting setup.

ISSUE: Overwhelming and unrefined user journey

SOLUTION: Apply best practises to enhance the UX of the website and allow us to guide the user journey.

Taken with a pinch of salt, here is a concept prototype showcasing various enhancements to the brand, UI and the UX.

RISKS: Major brand updates need to be communicated to existing customers. Due to the level of issues that currently exist, I don't feel there is a huge risk of damaging conversion, however, brand documentation needs to guide any changes.

ISSUE: How can we work without an agency?

SOLUTION: By implementing professional processes and standards.

By acting as our own internal agency and working in a similar manner, we can ensure risk is minimised and efficiency is maximised. If one doesn't already exist, we will create a version controlled repository which ensures all changes must go through approval on a staging site before being deployed live. Here, we can run automated tests on the code to ensure it is of a sufficient quality, does not negatively affect our lighthouse scores, and is correctly documented. This will give us a huge level of protection, and continuously increase our standards of work. If any updates cause issues, we can roll-back changes with a single click. Updates can be automatically rolled out under feature flags to be A/B tested before full deployment, or pushed live directly if required. These standardised, self-documenting processes will enable us to scale in terms of code output and adding new team members.

What do we need from the agency before ending the contract?

The most important thing is to ensure we obtain as much documentation as possible. We want to know the how, what, where, when and why for all the work they have produced, any existing issues, how they have set up their development pipelines, which external services are being used, and hacks that are in place.

ISSUE: Unknown value of custom build

Initially the website was built around the account functionality and the Aura Circle – we now need to determine the value of this service and prioritise it accordingly.

SOLUTION: Understand service to determine priority

Conduct user research into the current offering to determine where it sits in the backlog. Until then, it can remain as a separate service in its current form.

ISSUE: Failing checkout flow

The current checkout flow is experiencing massive drop-off at the first stage, which is essentially a terms & conditions selector. Following this, there are numerous steps, repeated information and bloat that might all act as distractors.

This itself is subject to the user actually finding the checkout process, which is currently hidden behind at least 4 page loads.

SOLUTION: Streamline the checkout process as much as possible by moving all legal barriers until the final step. Bring the checkout option to the top-level and structure the website messaging around it.

The checkout flow should be as succint as possible to allow the user to go through with their decision to purchase.

Any upsells or cross-sells must be carefully considered – it may be better to position them in the account section, or implement a time-based release, rather than during checkout.