TL; DR: A short case study about the process of a 3x increase in monthly sales leads by redesigning the TableSolution website; Improving UX by unifying Japanese and English website branding and adopting best practices in SEO
Problem Discovery
Our company, TableCheck, is a restaurant industry startup based in Tokyo. We have two products; TableCheck, a B2C booking web app, and TableSolution, a B2B restaurant management web app. TableSolution is the most popular restaurant management system amongst the premium and Michelin star restaurants in Japan and our growth was always driven through personal referrals. So amongst different channels of growth, the website was something Japan teams never paid a lot of attention to. Besides, we did not have a dedicated marketing team to handle digital growth.
However, then, we started expanding to several other countries, where we did not have the advantage of being well-known like in Japan. From my casual conversations with teams from different countries, slow growth was becoming an obvious concern and insufficient website was a plausible reason for it. This was a problem we definitely needed to solve!
The Approach
Prioritization
This was seemingly the most difficult aspect of the project. “If you need marketing, you don’t have a good product” is an ingrained belief in Japan. And any efforts in advancing the web channel was perceived as marketing, rightly so. To bring people from different cultures on the same page, we used the Japanese nemawashi approach and explained: “why our sales team needs the website” to important stakeholders.
The widely adopted global mindset in the company, using sales data points in communication, and a comparison with average expected performance came in handy to build consensus. And now, we were all in agreement to prioritize the redesign of TableSolution website to drive growth.
Audit
Before beginning any work, it was important to have a detailed knowledge of where we were. With a couple of days in hand to audit current status and processes, we arrived at these quick findings:
Goal Setting
Although the high-level goal was to increase the quality leads for growth, we wanted to focus on fundamental issues related to the website as a first step. The snapshot of our 4 major goals for redesign looked like:
- Use a standard content management system supporting multiple languages so that the different teams across countries can keep the content in sync with their market strategy
- Lay the foundation of a design system for consistent branding across products so that users have a lasting impression of the company and the product
- Define the customer journey and user experience for the website so that we can increase the number of leads per month
- Maintain the SEO ranking so that we do not lose traffic influx with the redesign
The Process
Requirement Gathering
Our first session of requirement gathering/branding session was scheduled with the founders. We wanted to ensure a clearly stated vision and well-defined brand to move forward from the current state. As an outcome of this, we penned down our motto line “Dining Connected” and the feel of our brand “simple, premium, friendly”. This truly helped in making several decisions throughout the process
With this and basic goals in mind, we then began gathering specific requirements from stakeholders, scattered across the company. Be it the sales, consultant, support, public relations team, everyone was identified as an important stakeholder. We wanted to understand how a website affects different departments and how can we make it better. However, because of diverse demographics, cultures, and languages, the method of communication differed from team-to-team. Devising a process for regular sync up and inviting people in jamming sessions worked seamlessly to bring the team closer together :)
Choosing a content management system
Turning these into requirements, we formed an assessment sheet to pick a content management system.
With WYSIWYG and internationalization as essential requirements, we picked Storyblok.
Defining Information Architecture
We had to be careful with this as the Japanese speaking audience and others perceive information rather differently. After several brainstorming sessions, we arrived at a consensus where we decided to release the Japanese and English versions together, with as little divergence as possible.
Also, we dug into the important keywords for our website to make sure that we do not lose our keywords and overall ranking in the process of content migration.
Design
Design for Japan is idiosyncratic, which is one of the reasons why Japanese companies struggle to reach a global audience. We aimed to have a standard design that appeals to audiences irrespective of cultural differences. For this, we studied several best-ranked designs in Japan, South-East Asia, and the United States and tried to have a diverse audience to give feedback on the wireframes and prototypes. In order to get the customer journey right, we conducted 2 rounds of usability tests to evaluate the call-to-actions.
Synchronizing wireframing and design system development helped us to speed up the process while laying the initial foundation of the system. Our design system is called TableKit :)
Results
Praises from our existing customers sealed the release for us. But about the goals, we set out with, on the release first redesign project in the company:
- We had a CMS that teams were comfortable using
- We had better brand representation and improved sales messaging
- We received a 3X influx of inquiries from our website.
- We had a bumpy SEO ride right after the release, as we anticipated, but later improved our Ahrefs ranking from 1.1 million to 362,000 in 3 months
Personal Takeaways
- Age is not a barrier. In spite of being the youngest member of the company, I was trusted to lead the project responsible for a massive change in the company. Having built genuine relationships, grounded on empathy, was exceptionally helpful when collaborating with people from multiple fields and cultures. A great team is capable of building great products :)
- Laying a strong foundation is vital and slow progress is still progress. Although we might have not achieved the number one SEO ranking or a 10X increase in sales leads, we are a place where this is possible now.
Learn about the growth strategy we followed through the process. Connect and share your thoughts via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
