UX Researcher
The Dallas Opera
2 Months
After an information architecture audit, interviews with stakeholders and patrons, and a review of analytics, the site would need a roadmap for more streamlined navigation. Ultimately, recommendations would include how and why to simplify their global and in-page navigation, and uncover accessibility issues on their mobile site.
Initial interviews with The Dallas Opera's web team uncovered their goals for increasing ticket sales and donations. Due to rapid growth and restructuring of the site due to Covid-19 and the switch to introduce a streaming service, the navigation changed, and multiple paths to new or existing pages were created.
Information about the streaming website had gone through several iterations of presentation. The mobile version of the site had not received the same amount of attention as the desktop version.
Google Analytics revealed that over 60 percent of users were on mobile when browsing the Dallas Opera website. However, navigation on the mobile version of the site was not consistent with the available pages on the desktop version.
Heatmaps and screen recordings taken through Hotjar showed most users who bought tickets navigated to the individual show page. Several users went through other paths in their search for tickets, before finding a path that lead them to their goal.
With a general flow mapped out through heatmaps and analytics, I put together a guide to test current patrons of The Dallas Opera to confirm several hypotheses:
1
Season subscription holders vs. Non-subscription holders
I found during initial tests that all users were opera season subscription holders and did not bother with the ticket buying or donation flows. As subscription holders, they did not need to buy single tickets through the website and regularly donated time and money.
The ticket buying and donation flows would need additional testing with non-subscribers, as they would be the most likely user to follow this path.
2
Skipping donations
Users came to the site with the express goal of buying tickets. Most users did not notice the “Donate” button on the global navigation bar.
Options to donate would need to be available on the ticket buying flow in order to catch users’ eye and encourage them to donate.
3
Information on the streaming service
Users could not immediately find necessary information about the streaming service, such as price, video length, devices they could watch on, and the types of videos available for streaming.
Users were hesitant to use a service without full knowledge of what they were buying, had to make assumptions, and did not find it valuable.
4
Additional insight into mobile user behavior
Ticket buying users stressed the importance of seeing the seating chart before purchasing a ticket. The seating chart was not available for mobile users until checkout.
Regular donors found information for volunteer opportunities buried within navigation labeled for donations, and felt it needed a separate section.
The loss of a landing page with vital information about the streaming website's offerings lead users to be confused about the service, as it was even less informational than the desktop version.
Content and images were not optimized for mobile viewing, and added a lot of scrolling for mobile users.
In order to remove blocks from users’ paths, I proposed several changes:
1
Remove the in-page side menu, which created confusing navigation loops and conflicted with the main navigation bar
2
With screen space freed by removing the side bar, components such as cards featuring single performances, could spread out across the page.
3
Replace the main navigation bar with a mega menu, putting all important information in one easily accessible place, rather than spread out or duplicated in different areas
4
Reformat page layouts and limit content to remove extra page scrolling.
During interviews, I realized the only participants I was interviewing were season pass holders, whose behavior did not follow the routes I saw in the hojar screen recordings. I then decided to reach out to The Dallas Opera stakeholders for patrons who were not season pass holders, which is where the most interesting insights came to light.
Naturally, season pass holders were the first (and only) users to agree for usability tests, because, as they mentioned in their interviews, they were invested in the success of the organization, and wanted to help it succeed however they could. I underestimated the passion of the organization's most staunch supporters, and that their user flows would differ so dramatically through their logins, email updates that automatically plopped them at the end of the user flow, and that many would rather use the phone to call, rather than browse the web and make purchases.
Going forward, I realized that users groups outside of the ones I study can have an impact on results and to be more thorough of my research into any possible routes to the end goal.
Copywrite 2023 Lauren Ashizawa