ARS Rescue Rooter
Date
Summer 2020
Role
Lead on UX Research, UX Design + UI Design
Client
The final prototype for the Offers.ARS-RR.com
Problem
Our team partnered up with ARS Rescue Rooter, a nationwide network of HVAC, plumbing, sewer, and drain services to homes and businesses. This program partnership created for ARS includes the creation of three separate marketing strategies:
Non-brand paid search - for PPC queries like “plumbing services”
Local SEO and organic website - for queries like “ARS in Raleigh”
Local services paid search - for queries like “plumber near me”
Goal
Our goal is to use our other media partnerships in order to build a multi-channel presence for ARS Rescue Rooter from the ground up, with the hopes that this process can be used in the future with other providers across our company’s verticals.
Competitive Analysis
I came into this project as a complete newbie in the plumbing and HVAC arena, so the first stage of research was to familiarize my team and myself with the current local and national market. Once I established a baseline, I then sought out to see where ARS Rescue Rooter fit within the mix. With that goal in mind, I created a 58 page slide deck with a full competitive analysis for ARS Rescue Rooter, detailing how it compares to competitors in the organic SEO, local SEO, local PPC, and non-brand PPC spaces. Based on our goals to generate paid and organic leads, I focused on each competitors’ lead generation forms, as well as landing page design trends and the placement of certain product and service offers.
Key Findings:
Localization: Local phone numbers displayed; geo-specific pages
COVID-19 Messages: Prominent “Emergency Services” and “24/7” messaging to match consumer urgency
Lead Generation Forms: Use of long, single page forms
Imagery: Technicians in branded uniform, trucks with company logos
Trust Icons: BBB, Houzz, HA, Good Housekeeping and service guarantee messaging
Promos: Heavy use of promotional coupons & material; typically location-specific and prominently displayed above the fold.
Chatbot Presence: Every site has self-service chatbots
Color Scheme: Very safe and traditional color palettes; trustworthy blue and red
Sneak Peak of ARS Rescue Rooter Competitive Analysis
Design Process
The bulk of my design process began following the information I learned from the competitive analysis. Based on standards set from our relevant competitors, I started by creating a style guide. Focusing on the key elements we needed to include, I used Figma to outline everything from the logo, color palette, iconography, fonts, and forms. Then for collaboration purposes, I moved the process to Adobe XD and began designing mobile and desktop wireframes for both the organic and paid websites. I shared the wireframes with the team and based on those changes I was able to create a fully fleshed out prototype for each different website.
A main lesson I learned throughout this project is the importance of starting the design process early. This choice significantly helped the speed in which our team could produce any small or large-scale changes.
Results
After meeting with the CEO, Vice President, and the Director of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), we confirmed the final designs and sent the prototypes to our developer. After the developer finished with the first round of coding, my team and I used Asana to assign and perform quality assurance (QA) checks. Once this was completed, we reconnected with the developer and the finalized website was ready for user testing and A/B testing to take place over the following months. As the lead designer and researcher on this project, it was my responsibility to document the process and share everything with the rest of the team. Using InVision, I compiled all my notes, research, iterations of all the wireframes, and the final product. This process is still being used at the company today in large scale marketing efforts.
Solutions
In the end, we created two different websites. One website focused entirely on paid marketing efforts and the second on organic marketing. Overall, our team succeeded in showing the benefit of creating websites tailored to their market purpose.
The final prototype for ARS-RR.com website
An overview of the wireframes and prototypes I created throughout the project.