Avvo was shifting its focus from the “Find a Lawyer/Doctor” product to the “Ask a Lawyer/Doctor” product. Our team placed emphasis upon receiving an answer from real lawyers/doctors in your area, depth of participation and frequency of answers.
After reviewing initial sketches and artifacts (photography, color palette, mockup) our main concerns were that users may have a hard time locating the other product lines and that the design would be a drastic brand departure. Based on feedback from the product team I produced alternative concepts focusing on Avvo's products with layout, typography and primary/secondary calls to action.
When it was time for initial feedback from consumers, I approached our User Researcher about doing some guerrilla five-second usability testing. We loaded up the mockups on an iPad and went to Westlake Park (Downtown Seattle) to solicit feedback. Most people were receptive, and we offered $10 in cash. (Although we did get rejected a few times— guess they thought we were selling something).
We showed a home page concept to participants for five seconds and asked them to jot down what they remembered. Participants were able to recall: Rated Lawyers, Doctors and Avvo. This proved a successful, quick test to get an idea of what consumers would absorb.
With many iterations taken into consideration, we settled on the answers product having the primary CTA and the lawyer/doctor directory being secondary. However, the directory is an important line of business because of attorney advertising, so PSM wanted to ensure was it still easily assessable from the home page.
This version of the home page ran for about 16 months, and heat map data revealed the majority of users going down the answers path without sacrificing the directory.