Website Usability Audit & Recommendations

Bunny's Flowers
I connected with Bunny’s Wish through the non-profit volunteering site, Catchafire. They provide educational gardening and farming programs to enrich and engage their community. I was brought in to conduct a usability audit on their current website. The goal was to improve the user experience of the site with a focus on the “Education” and “E-Commerce” sections. I aimed to identify usability issues and provide actionable solutions to make it more efficient for first-time visitors, volunteers, and donors.

Role:

UX Researcher, UX Designer

Duration:

Jan 2025 - Mar 2025

Tools:

Figma, Google Suite

Client Goals

Bunny's Flowers was in the early stages of implementing an online learning platform to their website and were unsure if the tool would be useful to users. Along with that, there were concerns with the site's usability related to navigation.

Deliverables

Recommendations on improving:
- Overall site user experience
- The education section

Current

Proposed

Initial Audit

I performed an initial audit to inform the tasks and questionnaires for the usability tests.

Findings

Confusing Navigation

The navigation was unintuitive with confusing labels and categories. Key sections, like the store, were buried under unrelated categories, creating frustration for users trying to find content.

Broken Online Learning Plug-In

The “Education” area was disorganized, with broken features and unclear distinctions between in-person and online courses. The plug-in used for course management was difficult to maintain and didn't offer sufficient functionality.

Content Issues

The website’s content was dense, repetitive, and not structured, which hindered readability and user engagement.

Unconventional Store

The store did not adhere to e-commerce design conventions, causing a poor user experience and the loss of potential customers.

Usability Testing

Methodology

The Goal
To understand users' pains in the education, get involved, and store sections
10 Participants
Aged 22-26 with varying volunteering experience
16 Tasks
Centered on the educational & e-commerce experiences
Post-Test Survey
To understand user priorities and desires

Key Insights

Navigation

Participants struggled with the confusing menu, particularly in the “Education” section.

Online Learning

Many participants found the courses to be poorly structured, with incomplete or faulty features.

Content

Large blocks of text discouraged users from engaging with content, and the lack of clarity in the “Education” section led to frustration.

What Needs to Change:

1. Restructure Navigation
2. Online Learning Restructure
3. Make Content Concise and Consistent

Initial Design Phase

Information Architecture

Informed by the usability tests, I began an initial design of the new navigation and structure of the site. The new design elevated the store from “About Us” and condensed sub-categories within the menu.

Before:
After:

Wireframes

These designs reorganized the existing content to match the proposed navigation structure.

Final Deliverables

1. Recommendations and Proposed Designs
2. Usability Audit Documentation

Recommendations

Restructure the Navigation

The new navigation condenses the existing content and provides a clear pathway for users to follow. Sub-categories have been renamed to provide more clarity on the content within them.

Blog-Like Approach for Educational Resources

The blog-like approach takes the content and organizes it into tutorials or lesson plans, removing the plug-in altogether to decrease the chance of errors or loading issues occurring. It also decreases the amount of maintenance that the plug-in currently requires. The plug-in needs detailed information to work properly and be intuitive to users. Additionally, renaming the page to “Online Resources” makes it more clear to the user what content is within this section

Content Improvements

- Create template structures for each page that are similar. Ensure that all content is concise, labeled accurately with headers, and informative to the users. Images can also be used to describe certain sections to provide context for the content.

Usability Audit Documentation

Bunny's Flowers received a comprehensive document containing the usability test results and findings, recommendations for visual improvements, and recommendations for structural improvements to the back end of the website. Further documentation of designs was provided upon request.

Let's Collaborate!

I'd love to collaborate with you! Whether your product involves research or design, I'll dive in and keep your project moving.

cynthia.phung5@gmail.com