About the project
How to design a website about dying that reminds you that you are living?
The Client
Carrie is an end of life doula, working with clients during challenging life transitions. Carrie is based in Germany with clients worldwide.
The Challenge
How to create a website about dying that reminds you that you are living?
When it comes to Carrie’s business, the biggest challenge she encounters is how to best present herself as a life transition coach. Talking about death, dying, and transitions can be one of the more sensitive and taboo topics of our time, and yet, Carrie’s approach to her work and clients is far from doom and gloom. She offers a unique approach, offering hope, support, and sometimes even humor during life’s most difficult phases.
The Solution
Knowing this, we were up to to the challenge of designing a website that not only clearly articulates who she helps and why she can help them, but doing it in a way that speaks about death and dying in a more positive light.
The Timeline
February 2021-April 2021
FIRST UP
Project Planning
What exactly do we need to communicate to Carrie’s potential clients through her website?
Our project kicks off with a strategy workshop where we assess Carrie’s vision for the site. We kept her users (AKA potential clients) at the forefront of every decision and discussion. We kept finding ourselves asking: what do we need to focus on to bring this vision to life and how does it affect Carrie’s potential clients? This helped us craft the main goal for the project.
GOALS
The main goal of this website is to increase month over month leads to her offerings and business. Through strategy session, we determined the ways we would accomplish this main goal:
Improve overall messaging: clearly articulating what you do, who you help, how you do it and what the result is for your clients.
Clearly communicate your brand values and experience: To provide a unique way of looking at death for your clients, giving them a sense of relatability and understanding, while establishing you as a trusted expert in the space that will understand their own unique situation.
Organize and re-define offerings: Clearly laying out the services you provide and what it can look and feel like to your potential clients
Requirements
Services page
Sales page for her course
FAQ’s
Testimonials
SUCCESS METrics. How will we know this was a success?
Track month over month month traffic to leads ratio.
NEXT UP
Research
AS COMMON WITH UX/UI DESIGN, THE PROCESS WAS NOT LINEAR….
Due to budget constraints, we were not given the budget to conduct primary research with interviews and surveys. However, we were able to improvise with quantitive data and insights from Carries past clients.
Research Goals
To understand the ideal client and what drives their motivations or hesitations for booking with Carrie. In addition, we wanted to get to the core of what makes Carrie stand out. Why choose her over other End of Life doulas? How can we convey that on her website?
Research Methods
Quantitative research methods: competitive research, market research (online articles about end of life doulas, Reddit and social media threads about this topic, and industry journals).
Key quotes: “ We lost a beloved family member when I was a child, and with the adults all taken up with last-ditch attempts to save this person's life plus their own overwhelming grief, I was more or less left alone trying to understand what death was and where this person had gone, as well as come to terms with the fact that they were never coming back. All the information I'd gotten about death up to that point was terribly watered down and sugar-coated and did not come close to the hard reality. The presence of a calm, warm person who liked and respected children and who was not caught up in the tragedy, who could have answered my questions or, even better, helped my parents figure out what they needed to ask and tell me, would have made the whole rest of my life go better.” -NY Times comments on “‘Death Doulas’ Provide Aid at the End of Life”
Qualitative: I went in depth with Carrie to learn more about the clients she works with and has worked with in the past.
I've never heard of "an end-of-life doula, or “death doula,” until this article. I only knew of hospice care but that was primarily for the terminal patient.
My biggest fear in life is living it without my husband. I sometimes find that fear paralyzing.
NEXT UP
Personas
Our research painted a good picture of Carrie’s ideal clients, which helped us distill them down into two personas.
The take control dad
Mark (he/him) (46). Athletic and charming, he runs his family business partly from his home in an affluent neighborhood outside of Munich/New York/Denver/ and partly from the office that’s just a 10 minute drive from home. His house is nestled in a wooded area overlooking a small lake.
Three times a week he takes a run with his aging Labrador. He’s wearing his usual runner’s uniform of tights and a jacket and he plugs his wireless ear pods into his ear and turns up the Rolling Stones. This is the only time he really has to himself. In addition to running the family business, he has two young daughters, which he is the primary caretaker because his wife is terminally ill. He juggles home life, caretaking and work life like they are all projects: efficient. methodical. swiftly.
Most of the time he’s in default/auto-pilot mode. He’s happy when he is taking a run and also at the end of the day, when the house is still and he can read a book about sailing. He plans out in meticulous detail the next sailing trip in his head. He desperately wants to take another trip with the whole family…
USER STORY
Mark was referred to Carrie’s work through a mutual friend. They were first introduced on email. He loved the mindful and thoughtful nature of Carries correspondence with her, but wanted to get a full picture of what her services look like when working together. He clicks through to her website from her email signature and makes his way through the site.
The concerned sister
Sarah, (she/her) (32) is a lead marketing manager for a global bank. She is married with one 2 year old girl and one baby on the way. Her sister, Emiline, (37) recently passed away from ovarian cancer and she is absolutely devastated. Emiline and her were very close and she left behind a husband and two kids.
Sarah spent the better part of two years holding the weight of her sisters sickness—checking in every day, making appointments, cooking food, spending late nights Googling looking for answers. Sarah would break down at times, but then “suck it up” and hold it together for the family. With her parents in full shock of the diagnosis and Emiline’s husband in autopilot mode trying to take care of the kids, she felt a personal responsibility to step into the caretaker in every way she could, which put her own needs on the backburner.
When Emiline passed away, Sarah felt a wave of “anger, sadness, and almost numbness. “After all of that—she is now gone.” She has also felt conflicted—holding the joy of a new baby while simultaneously losing her sister. She likes to optimize her own life and is usually willing to try most things once. She is into alternative ways of healing, including acupuncture, meditation, and nutrition, and believes in therapy.
She has a brief understanding of Trauma, but has not been able to fully process her own. Sarah recently heard about end of life doulas on a podcast and she felt intrigued. She reached out to the hospital that treated her sister and they recommended her to Carrie. Sarah’s hope is to find support and guidance during this difficult time. She is of, course, thinking about the entire family too and thinks it would be a good idea for everyone to process this together, while also giving individuals space to heal, too.
USER STORY
Sarah finds Carries website through a local hospital and feels it is the first time someone has put into words what she has been feeling, but not able to articulate. She finds the idea of grief counseling to be interesting and valuable, but she wants to talk to Carrie herself first to ask clarifying questions. She fills out the inquiry form on the website.
What we did with our research insights…
We learned there were quite a lot of men that work with Carrie. We chose to remove tones of pink from previous branding to make the business appeal to not only women, but also men seeking help. Being a gender neutral brand became important.
We also learned there was confusion when it came to Carrie’s service offerings. After a strategy session, we determined Carrie has two main service offerings: end of life mentorship (helping families or individuals that have a family member with a terminal illness), and grief companionship (mentoring those that have already experienced a loss to someone they love). Knowing we could fit her services into these two main categories, we would find ways to clearly allow users to choose the service that fits their current life stage.
An end of life doula is not a common concept for many of Carrie’s potential clients. They typically find her based off of recommendations from others. We will clearly explain the value of working with one, and paint a descriptive picture of what it can look and feel like to hire Carrie (what’s in it for them? why should they hire her?).
Then we brainstormed and reframed pain points…
How Might We?
Taking what we learned, we framed the pain points into “how might we” statements.
How might we articulate the value of working with an end of life doula?
How might we provide confidence, clarity, and a sense of ease upon landing on the website?
How might we help users quickly determine which service offering is right for their life stage?
Now we begin laying our ideas out
Wireframes
Next, I brainstormed on paper, then brought fleshed out ideas into Figma…
Key insight….
It was a challenge figuring out how we would best communicate to users which service offering they fall into. Essentially, we needed them to answer the question for themselves:
Are you experiencing a loss? (if yes, then end of life mentorship is for you)
Has a loved one passed away? (if yes, you should explore grief companionship)
After a crazy 8’s exercise, I gained some clarity and determined the best way to design this was with self-segmentation directly on the home page.
Time for the polished look…
High-fidelity and development
Users typically have questions about self-paced courses. I implemented a beautiful swipe feature to showcase common questions.
Quick USP's with icons help give a visual way of talking about the value and benefits of life transition coaching.
The about page tells Carries story, while articulating what makes her different. I made sure to talk about not only values, but her approach to working with life and death.
Testimonials are a key component of not only building trust, but giving users a peek into what it feels like to work with Carrie. I coded a slider to give it an elegant look.
On the home page, I displayed information about the course after the self-segmentation section. If users were still scrolling and considering, they may be better candidates for the course over Carries 1:1 programs.
Time for the polished look…
Results and Takeaways
This project was fulfilling, creative, and strategic. Carrie went on maternity leave right after, so we will be tracking her client booking increases upon return to office. I learned how to take a rather unknown concept (end of life doula) and service offering on a taboo topic (death) and turn it into something uplifting, welcoming, and inviting. Messaging, branding, and strategic layout of site architecture were key elements to this sites success.
