Sunpik

User Research & Landing Page Design

The Company

Sunpik is a one-stop-consultant for getting solar power. They remotely analyze properties, create custom solar-power system designs, as well as provide consumers with the best options for installes.

The Challenge

Sunpik came to our team to seek help in designing an effective desktop landing page and to optimize said landing page through AB testing efforts.

Empathize

In order to design an effective landing page, we would need to dive deep into the consumers' mindset to figure out what their ultimate needs and wants were. The messaging on our landing page would position Sunpik in such a light as to relieve the consumer's pain-points and satisfy their needs.

USMO

We first dove into an USMO exercise. USMO is short for "User, Situation, Motivation, and Outcome" – it helped us better understand the situation that brings the user to the landing page as well as the underlying mindset and motive of the user when they arrive on the page.

Through USMO, we were able to arrive at some critical insights around our potential site visitors:

  1. User must have been interested enough in solar to either have organically searched for Sunpik or to have tapped into a Sunpik google ad-word or facebook advertisement
  2. User is likely to be somewhere in between the early research phase and the service-provider selection phase
  3. Most users are likely to be familiar with some of the environmental and/ or financial benefits of going solar

User Research

Through interview with industry professionals and online research, we learned that typical solar users were 50 to 60 year-old homeowners. 

Adhering to this target demographic, we selected six home-owners who were interested in solar as well as six who have already made the switch.  

Some of the questions we asked current solar-users:

Some of the questions we asked users interested in solar:

Define & Analyze

Affinity Map

We filtered through the immense amount of information and jotted down pain-points, values, and insights. This was a hefty process as some interviews were an hour long!

We used affinity maps to organize the pain-points and values into categories to see what was brought up most. We ranked these categories of values and pain-points by how important they were to the users. The top 4 pain-points/ values to users:

  1. Cost & Savings
  2. Trustworthy & Knowledgeable Installer
  3. Technology & Aesthetics
  4. Environmental Impact

Personas

With the needs and wants of our users established, we chose to define our target audience by creating two personas.  We realized we created successful personas when we looked back at the interviewees and almost all of them fit into one of the two personas.  

The personas defined who we were going to design the landing page to appeal to.

Ideate & Create

Before  diving into  designing the components of the landing page, we analyzed other companies', including competitiors', landing pages to see what the typical components were.

We brainstormed what would be nice to have on the landing page but not essential; these included video testimonials, interactive explanations, etc. We recommended these to the client for future exploration.

Branding

Sunpik did not have any branding guidelines. Thus, we utilized feedback from the Sunpik team as well as information collected from our user research to establish some general design principles and a very basic style-guide:

Check out my live prototype!

Lo-Fi Mockup

For each section of the landing page, we drafted layout and copy on pieces of paper. We taped these on the wall vertically to represent the landing page in physical form.

We experimented with layout and iterations of text and imagery and tested users for feedback.

Hi-Fi > Validate > Reiterate

We put together two hi-fi prototypes with similar design but different copy, which we used to perform AB-validation testing with 4 users per design to see which communicated Sunpik's value-prop and process more effectively. We reiterated based on insights from testing.

Please see some key design decisions and findings detailed below:

Header & Hero

Insight from Testing

Initially, we had 'Get Design' as the CTA – through testing, we discovered users had no clue what a design would include

Design Decision

Modal

Insight from Testing

Users disliked forms that looked too rigid and "salesy"

Design Decision
  • We emphasized friendliness, trust, and knowledgeability through the copy
  • The customer rep's picture and short info provides a personal touch
  • To maximize conversion, we limited fields to only the essential ones

Testimonials

Insight from Testing

Users understood the claims made in the header but did not understand how Sunpik would provide those values

Design Decision

Why Sunpik Section

Insight from Research

We discovered in our user interviews that many current solar users read from brochures and online resources before taking further steps

Design Decision:
  • We provided adequate amount of information for those interested in the details while also making the content easy to understand for those who scan instead
Challenge:

An ongoing challenge was differentiating Sunpik from installers, and this was one of the main objectives of the client

Design Decision:
  • Through AB testing the sub-header, we were able to identify how to better position Sunpik as solar consultants

The Sunpik Process

Challenge

A challenge we faced was balancing what Sunpik wanted to get across to the user and what could actually be effectively communicated

Design Decision
  • We focused more on the 'why' than the 'how' in order to drill down on what the users needed to know instead of simply laying out how the process would work

Benefits of Solar

Insight

Due to the demographic targeted by Sunpik's growth campaign, most users who reach our landing page are familiar with the benefits of solar

Design Decision
  • We put the "benefits of solar" section at the end of the page, as our users are not strangers to solar benefits

Landing Page - Short Form

In addition to creating the long-form landing page, we also created a short-form and other assets for Sunpik to AB test with.

Stay tuned for results of AB testing!

Reflection

Looking back at this project........