How Design Doubled Traffic to Ways We Work

Originally published on February 3rd, 2015

In November 2014 Ways We Work went through a major design overhaul. The impact it had on traffic for the site blew me away — so I thought I’d share what I learned.

When the project launched in March 2014 I used a simple Wordpress theme and a logo I’d whipped up myself in Illustrator. My main focus was getting enough people interested in the project to get some great interviews on the site. I created a Twitter account to share interviews, emailed friends about the project and shared interviews through my personal accounts. Month to month the site maintained a steady 600 unique visitors and a range of 1200–1500 pageviews.

As more people became interested in the project and the number of interviews started to grow I decided to really throw myself into it and see what I could do to make it even better.

I focused on researching sites with similar long-form content. A lot of editorial sites and creative ways of displaying a lot of different content without it looking busy. If you’re interested in reading more about the redesign process I wrote about it here.

I reached out to a local design team called HIM and HER because I wanted to put some more thought into the logo and create something that could work in a variety of mediums.

I moved the entire site from Wordpress to Statamic and launched the new design on November 26th, 2014.

In December the site traffic more than doubled with 1400 unique visitors and 5500 pageviews. The bounce rate dropped from 70% to 47% with the average visitor spending close to 3 minutes on the site.

The only major change was the redesign of the site.

In January the site is on track to have 4000 unique visitors (more than doubling again) and 10,000 pageviews.

I’m looking forward to continued growth of the site but wanted to share the impact of a thoughtful redesign on the traffic. It’s been a great lesson for me in the value design has and how it can elevate a project on so many levels. The low bounce rate is the most encouraging to me because it means the design has inspired people to read through more interviews and that the content is registering with readers.

If you love the site, share it with a friend, or share it with the entire internet. If you want to write about the project, I’d like to talk to you — and also give you a hug. Reach me at amandah@wayswework.io.

Originally published at wayswework.io.