User Experience Archives | Samantha Soper

Project Type: User Experience

HostGator Blog Theme on WordPress

September 7, 2018September 13, 2018
by Samantha Soper

After the successful implementation of the Bluehost blog theme, I was referred to their sister company for the HostGator blog theme redesign. While the Bluehost project was more development-focused, HostGator’s team wanted full UX design, theme development, and implementation.

HostGator Blog Theme

First of all, I single-handedly took this project through UX design and development to final implementation in under six months. Significant improvements to SEO, schema markup, and customizability were the HostGator team’s most important objectives. Therefore, those requests were kept in mind throughout the design and development process.

Current Live Site

UX Planning

As a result of my blog questionnaire, I learned that their content manager was inspired by FitBit and Hubspot’s blogs. Additionally, they wanted a more modern look using colorful flat graphics, matching their new brand direction. They also liked board-style content blocks and subtle hover effects.

Sketch Concepts

Home Page Wireframe Sketch Options

Single Post Wireframe Sketch Options

Archive Page Wireframe Sketch Options

Wireframe Mockups

Home Page Wireframe

HostGator Blog Single Post Final Wireframe

Single Post Wireframe

Archive Page Wireframe

Tools Used:

Lean WordPress Theme Foundation: _S (UnderscoreS)
WordPress Test Data: WP Theme Unit Test
Framework: Bootstrap
Class for Recent Posts Widget Adjustment: Extend Recent Posts
Class for Category Meta Additions: Catapult Taxonomy Meta Class

Pro Pages Plugin on WordPress

April 6, 2017September 16, 2017
by Samantha Soper

The Pro Pages plugin generates a WordPress (WP) custom post type for information about various PGA Pros. Each Pro Page contains equipment, apparel for major tournaments, and a Twitter feed.

This project was an effort to migrate my successful What’s in the Bag? (WITB) PHP application built for Golfsmith over to Golf Town. Due to inconsistencies between the two server environments, I rebuilt the application as a WordPress plugin on the Golf Town blog. Additionally, I worked closely with GT’s IT to initiate a hosting relationship with WPEngine.

Pro Pages Plugin WP

Current Live Pages Samples

UX Planning

Data Model

On the WP admin side, equipment and apparel items are added as repeatable field groups. When a Golf Town (GT) product URL is placed into a product URL field, a combination of AJAX and CURL pull the product title and image from the GT e-commerce site. This OOP plugin is i18n compatible, with French-Canadian l10n files.

2017 Masters Tournament Scripting Sections

These elements were live on the Golf Town blog during the 2017 Masters tournament. While these sections only remain active on the page for a couple of weeks after the tournament, I captured screenshots to preserve my work.

All Players Masters scripting archive on GT Blog in English

All Players Masters scripting archive on GT Blog in French

Jordan Spieth Masters scripting on GT Blog in English

Jordan Spieth Masters scripting on GT Blog in French

Rickie Fowler Masters scripting on GT Blog in English

Rickie Fowler Masters scripting on GT Blog in French

Rory McIlroy Masters scripting on GT Blog in English

Rory McIlroy Masters scripting on GT Blog in French

Sergio Garcia Masters scripting on GT Blog in English

Sergio Garcia Masters scripting on GT Blog in French

Dustin Johnson Masters scripting on GT Blog in English

Dustin Johnson Masters scripting on GT Blog in French

Tools Used:

Object-Oriented Plugin Foundation: WordPress Plugin Boilerplate
Field Generator: CMB2
Twitter Feed: TweetPHP

Golf Town Blog on WordPress

March 31, 2017August 9, 2017
by Samantha Soper

The Golf Town blog came into play as a way to move several successful digital programs over from Golfsmith. Unfortunately, the What’s in the Bag (WITB) PHP applications that I built for Golfsmith didn’t work on Golf Town’s server environment. Due to this, I made the suggestion that the WITB Pro Pages content be incorporated into the blog.

There was a rush to get the WITB Pro Pages plugin live before the 2017 Masters. Starting with the old Golfsmith blog on my own development environment, I had a contractor begin working on modifying the template to match Golf Town’s branding. I focused on getting the WITB plugin built out and set up full localization on the Golf Town template, once styling was completed. I coordinated with Golf Town’s IT staff to set up WPEngine hosting for the blog and then handled a portion of the MySQL migration to the new hosting location.

Golf Town Blog

Current Live Site

Result

Major Canadian golf news sites have already started to partner with the Golf Town blog. By August, ScoreGOLF teamed up with Golf Town to announce their yearly Top 59 Canadian Golf Course Countdown. In addition, the blog nets over 28,000 views on peak traffic days.

Credits:

Additional Theme Development: Shelby Pickett

Golfsmith Home Page Enhancements

July 4, 2016September 18, 2017
by Samantha Soper

The Golfsmith home page (HP) enhancements were an ongoing, constantly evolving project. Luckily, I had the opportunity to lead a huge overhaul of the strategy and design of the HP in 2016. Offer sections were cut. Content marketing sections and featured categories were brought in. And engagement and conversion increased because of it. Learn more about my process below.

Golfsmith Home Page

Progression

Since the start of my employment with Golfsmith, the HP changed drastically. Consequently, I assisted the UX Manager in the UI CSS development for updates made in 2015 and led the header redesign in late 2015. As stated above, I had the opportunity to lead the 2016 redesign project. The screenshots below are a brief overview of the progression of the HP.

NOTE ON LIVE EXAMPLES: As of 11/4/16, Golfsmith is no longer conducting business and all associated websites are offline.

Early 2014

Early 2015

Late 2015

2016 Redesign

UX Planning for 2016 Redesign

Competitive Analysis

I started out by monitoring the HP content strategy of top retailers. Therefore, I focused on Golf Galaxy, DSG, Academy, REI, and SportChek as competitors in the sports and outdoors category. Due to breadth of brand offerings and clean design, I also focused on Gap, Home Depot, Sephora, Target, and Williams-Sonoma.

At Golfsmith, we updated the HP daily with several savings stories. After monitoring competitors for a couple of weeks, I noticed some strong differences in their HP strategy and scheduling.

Wireframes and Prototypes

Another thing I noticed during my competitive analysis were common threads throughout each HP. More oft than not, the HPs included the following:

Featured category call-outs
Link to a new arrivals category
Eye-catching call-out to the sale/clearance/deals page
Content marketing features
An incentive to join the loyalty program
High-rated, recommended products

Opposite to this strategy, Golfsmith was loading the HP with product offers and savings stories. Hence, my suggestion was to move towards the category- and content-based home pages trending in retail at the time.

After a few wireframe iterations, we reached a balance that the marketing, e-commerce, and merchandising teams could agree on. It seems like the roll-out of Amazon’s category-based HP might have strongly influenced the final decision.

Initial wireframe

Early prototype

A/B Testing

Finally, once the home page was developed, A/B testing of the new HP against the old was performed through Optimizely. The test reached statistical significance within a couple of days.

Conclusion

As a result of A/B testing, the newest version of the homepage produces significantly higher customer engagement and increased revenue. In conclusion, overall revenue has seen a steady increase since launch.

Credits:

2016 UI Development Collab: Bastien Buchaca
2015 Redesign Lead: Omar Gonzalez

What’s in the Bag? Pro Golfer Pages

July 2, 2016August 9, 2017
by Samantha Soper

What’s in the Bag? (WITB) pro pages were birthed from discussions between the e-commerce and content marketing teams. They wanted to bring major tournament outfits (scripting), Twitter feeds, and the equipment in the bags of selected pro golfers to the websites.

While they had featured simple tournament scripting landing pages in previous years, they needed my user experience and UI development expertise to pull off their idea. In total, the WITB pages represent the bags of 20 PGA and LPGA pros. Furthermore, the Twitter wall features live tweets from over 100 different pro golfers.

During major tournaments, the WITB pages are enhanced with a tournament scripting “What the Pros Wear” section, through coordination with select vendors. Additionally, this multi-layer PHP web application also deployed internationally on Golfsmith (US) and Golf Town (CA) in English and French.

What’s in the Bag? Pro Landing Pages

Current Live Pages

NOTE ON LIVE EXAMPLES: As of 11/4/16, Golfsmith is no longer conducting business and all associated websites are offline. However, you can check out the Golf Town Pro Pages plugin, which I used this PHP application to build.

2016 Tournament Scripting Sections

These elements were live on the Golfsmith and Golf Town sites during the 2016 Masters, US Open, and PGA Championship. While these sections only remain active on the page for a couple of weeks after the tournament, I captured screenshots to preserve my work.

Jordan Spieth Masters scripting on Golfsmith

Jordan Spieth Masters scripting on Golf Town in French

Rickie Fowler Masters scripting on Golfsmith

Rickie Fowler Masters scripting on Golf Town in French

Rory McIlroy Masters scripting on Golfsmith

Rory McIlroy Masters scripting on Golf Town in French

Bubba Watson Masters scripting on Golfsmith

Bubba Watson Masters scripting on Golf Town in French

Jason Day Masters scripting on Golfsmith

Dustin Johnson Masters scripting on Golfsmith

Jordan Spieth US Open scripting on Golfsmith

Jordan Spieth US Open scripting on Golf Town in French

Rickie Fowler US Open scripting on Golfsmith

Rickie Fowler US Open scripting on Golf Town in French

Rory McIlroy US Open scripting on Golfsmith

Bubba Watson US Open scripting on Golf Town in French

Jason Day US Open scripting on Golfsmith

Dustin Johnson US Open scripting on Golfsmith

Rickie Fowler PGA Championship scripting on Golfsmith

Rickie Fowler PGA Championship scripting on Golf Town in French

Jordan Spieth PGA Championship scripting on Golfsmith

Rory McIlroy PGA Tournament scripting on Golf Town in French

The Results

As a result, during major tournaments, the pages drove huge traffic spikes and increased revenue for both brands. Due to marketing efforts around this application, our email team participated in a Lunch & Learn with LiveClicker at the 2016 Experian Client Summit.

Custom Clubmaking Widget on Golfsmith

February 4, 2016September 18, 2017
by Samantha Soper

Through collaboration with Golfsmith’s Information Services team, the Custom Clubmaking module moved from a standalone page to a seamless integration within the product pages. Initially, the form was built to feed into a table-based layout. As a result, I cleaned up the PHP code to output HTML in line with more modern standards and IS implemented it without issue. After that, I moved onto redesigning and coding out the CSS, while they worked on the backend.

Custom Clubmaking Widget

After the first pass, I had succeeded in giving the module a more modern look and feel. You can see this first version in the UX Planning & Prototypes section below.

Due to the potential length of the widget, jQuery UI’s accordion widget was implemented to save space. I worked directly with a member of the IS team at their computer to implement the front-end jQuery calls. The final launched version is in the screenshot below.

Screenshots

NOTE ON LIVE EXAMPLES: As of 11/4/16, Golfsmith is no longer conducting business and all associated websites are offline.

UX Planning & Prototypes

As stated above, the widget initially used a table-based layout. While organizing the information into a wireframe, I realized the tables would cause some issues. In addition, I read through the PHP code to plan for all the variable options.

Wireframe sketch for Custom Clubmaking Widget

Widget wireframe sketch

Custom Club module initial prototype

Conclusion

After launch, custom club orders more than doubled within the week, a trend which continued until close of business. Furthermore, custom clubs widget performance continually increased revenue since its launch. It seemed like the improved and easier-to-use custom clubs experience was a hit with customers.

Golfmas Gift Center 2015

December 25, 2015February 1, 2018
by Samantha Soper

Each holiday season Golfsmith and Golf Town features their top gifting options on their Golfmas gift center landing page. Since I had taken over all UX duties by the end of 2015, the gift centers became my responsibility.

Golfmas Gift Center Screenshots

NOTE ON LIVE EXAMPLES: As of 11/4/16, Golfsmith is no longer conducting business and all associated websites are offline.

Golfsmith Holiday Gift Center 2015

Golf Town Holiday Gift Centre 2015 – French

Golfsmith Blog on WordPress

December 14, 2015August 8, 2017
by Samantha Soper

The Golfsmith blog was an effort to bring Golfsmith to the content marketing forefront and to direct social traffic towards the website. First of all, I researched and created wireframes of the best option for the blog layout and content organization. In addition, I set up the blog, installed the appropriate plugins, and developed the WordPress template. To complete the project on a rushed timeline, I trained a contractor and coordinated with him on wrapping final stages.

Golfsmith Blog

Screenshots & Wireframe

Blog Home Page on Tablet

Blog Post on Mobile

UX Wireframe of Blog + Icon Sketches

NOTE ON LIVE EXAMPLES: As of 11/4/16, Golfsmith is no longer conducting business and all associated websites are offline. However, you can check out the Golf Town blog, which I used this template to build.

Result

Within a year of launch, the blog ranked #1 on Golf Assessor’s Top 50 Best Golf Blogs. Furthermore, the blog was awarded #6 in Feedspot’s Top 100 Golf Blogs on the Web.

Credits:

Additional Theme Development: Isaac Franz

Golfsmith Fair-Way Promise Page

July 9, 2015February 1, 2018
by Samantha Soper

Guarantees and brand equities play a huge part in gaining customers’ trust. Hence, the Golfsmith Fair-Way promise was created. In an effort to communicate this, the Fair-Way promise needed to live on the website. Since there were 4 tenets, I used the jQuery-UI accordion to hide the details so the customer could focus on the tenets one-at-a-time. During the time of launch, Golfsmith’s branding relied heavily on golf course motifs, such as scorecards and turf. These themes are present in the landing page design.

View the Golfsmith Fair-Way

NOTE ON LIVE EXAMPLES: As of 11/4/16, Golfsmith is no longer conducting business and all associated websites are offline.

Hellas Construction Web App

January 24, 2014December 19, 2018
by Samantha Soper

The Hellas Construction web app was a massive undertaking I conquered singlehandedly. First of all, their website hadn’t been updated since 2009 and became a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster situation. Due to several unnecessary pages, the user experience was highly confusing. Adding projects to the site was slow and regional sales managers needed them quickly. Several of the issues are detailed in the In-Depth UX Analysis and Overview below.

Hellas Construction Web App

In-Depth UX Analysis and Overview

Hellas Sales Portal WordPress Plugin

Beta Training Documentation

Hellas Hearts of Hope Charity Microsite

December 1, 2013October 9, 2016
by Samantha Soper

To launch the Hellas Hearts of Hope charity trip, members of the Hellas Construction team helped gather donations from family and friends. Most importantly, they needed an easy way to receive cash donations from vendors and other contacts. Due to this need, I built a one-page informational site explaining the mission of the trip. For this project, I built a simple, responsive microsite to collect PayPal donations.

Furthermore, I assisted in strategizing the donation campaign and logistically setting reach goals. These reach goals and donation levels helped sponsors visualize how they would be helping the village. Additionally, I wrote all copy for the microsite.

Through the money donated to the site, Hellas Construction was able to provide much needed school and medical supplies to the village of Jucuarán. Additionally, some piñatas and candy were purchased to make a fun day for the children. Most noteworthy, we were able to supply the village with clothing, toys, books, and other materials. These helped them getting through the upcoming holiday season and school year.

View the Hellas Hearts of Hope charity microsite

Visit the site

Roxie Polymers

August 6, 2013April 19, 2017
by Samantha Soper

View the Project

Visit the Roxie Polymers website

Nina Davis, MA, LMT Site on WordPress

January 10, 2013March 29, 2018
by Samantha Soper

Nina Davis, MA, LMT is a biodynamic craniosacral and lymph drainage therapist. Located in Austin since 1996, she treats adults and children. Her gentle, touch-based therapeutic modalities move energy and fluid around the body. Most noteworthy, she was voted Best infant Craniosacral Therapist for three years by the Austin Birthing Community.

About Nina Davis’s WordPress Site

Nina contacted me wanting to expand her business online and spread the word about her small business. Furthermore, she wanted a unique user experience that highlights naturally-occurring fractals. As a result, each page features on a large, natural fractal and matching background. Blue and green menu themes correspond to the fractal image, as well, while a frosted glass pane displays page content. I built page subsections with jQuery tabs.

Current Live Examples

NOTE ON LIVE EXAMPLES: I built this site in 2013 and was not hired to maintain it.
Visit Nina’s website

Screenshots

I collected these screenshots soon after I built the site.

Home page

About Nina page

About therapeutic modalities page

Referrals & resources page

Contact page

NeuSkin Organic Skin Care on WordPress

January 9, 2011March 29, 2018
by Samantha Soper

Started by Elizabeth Bentley, NeuSkin Austin performs organic, non-invasive dermatological procedures. In 2007, Elizabeth got her esthetician license from the Aveda Institute. Her unique approach works closely with each client to determine the cause of their skin problems. In addition, she engages in an in-depth consultation about the client’s insecurities and concerns. As a result, she delivers a soothing, effective and pain-free skin care solution.

About the NeuSkin WordPress Site

In 2010, I worked with Elizabeth to launch her website for her new small business. As NeuSkin grew, she reached out to me to add an e-commerce store to her website. In conclusion, she’s been able to offer organic skin care products for several years and has grown her product offerings.

View the Project

A NOTE ON LIVE EXAMPLES: I launched the original neuskinaustin.com site back in 2011, so it has since been redesigned. However, I collected the screenshots below while the site was still active. You can also visit the old site via the WayBack Machine, but it is an archived version so some data may be missing or non-functional.

Home page

About page

Services page

eCommerce store

Like what you see?

Contact me