Soundwave Hearing
Services
Strategy + Research
UX Design
UI Design
Web Design
eCommerce site
Platforms
Wordpress
Shopify
Klaviyo
Soundwave Hearing is a hearing health start-up that reached out about helping them get their over-the-counter hearing aids to market. Following the lean start-up model, I have done a host of different types of digital and print design work for both internal and external audiences, however, my biggest project to showcase is the website. I mainly collaborated with the VP of Marketing throughout the many projects but also worked with various other freelancers and agencies on various facets of the project when necessary.
Below, I've laid out the process I used.
1. User Experience + Research
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Stakeholders defined goals/success for website
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Stakeholders defined prospective buyer pain points and created User Personas
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I created a Strategy and Proposal (Concept) for an MVP: a Shopify site that would be launchable for investors and other partnerships eventually leading to their final goals.
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Prioritized Projects to avoid scope creep and created manageable plan.
The team had already done some research-related ground work before I came to the project including a bare bones Wordpress site. When tasked with improving the overall site and finishing the build, I came up with a plan and proposal to migrate to a Shopify site to better suit their business needs. They agreed, and instead of having two separate sites linked, they could streamline to just one. The integrated bells and whistles would get created as needed and would be integrated through time.
2. Information Architecture + Prototyping
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Created wireframes and rough page layouts
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Created navigation + footer
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Honed in on content and messaging
I tried my best to really immerse myself in users' shoes, and created everything based on the persona profiles they provided. While (over)thinking who these personas were, I integrated all the features while really thinking about _how_ the user moved through the site. I wasn't given many assets to work with, but managed to solve some of the branding needs with stock imagery, and newly created assets.
3. Shopify e-commerce site, Content development, and Messaging development
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Set up the site and theme (only outsourced a couple small customizations upon my completion of the project)
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Designed for ADA Compliance and SEO
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Designed the site and sections and wrote a lot of the web copy
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Created many assets, including a photograph of the header photo
We settled on a theme that would work with all the specs. Considering I had zero experience with Shopify, I was proud of moving forward with it and trusting the process on a new platform. It ended up being exactly what the client needed, and they use it everyday.
4. Evaluation and Editing
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Several rounds of improvements as more assets and feedback came in.
After the MVP was up, more assets came in, and more functionality was added. I was able to check the stats on the website to see what pages had activity and made adjustments based on my findings. It was at that point, sales went up 20%, which felt like tangible success.
Other Items Included
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I evolved the branding and maintained the Branding Guide as I developed the project.
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Created email newsletters and promos in Klaviyo.
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Designed Google Ads, print marketing materials, packaging, and other promotional items.
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Updated the site including Theme and Shopify updates.
User Personas
These personas were my north star and didn't leave my cork board for weeks.
Home Page Design-Shopify
Header Image
The header image changed a bit, but I chose to showcase this iteration because I took the photo!
Social Proof
I always try to include social proof when possible. Nothing like someone else's opinion to sell you on something.
Takeaways
It was important to the client to have some 'technical takeaways' that still were clear enough for the average customer. There were also terms like "FDA Cleared OTC Self-Fit" that speak to the audiology community for whom separate marketing pages were designed as well.
How it Works - 4 part slider
We wanted to show how simple the process was, and we hoped the user would want to click through it.
Testimonial from v.1
Just a quick note on the look and feel of our new Shopify site. In short, I think It’s great!
Really like the look and feel. Clean, crisp and techy. Knowing you haven’t been given many resources to work with (photos come to mind), I think you have made great progress. Keep up the great work.
Anthony Florek, President + Founding Partner
Product Page Design-Shopify
Product Area
I created a few circular graphical assets that looked a little more exciting then just the hearing aids themselves.
Other product pages allowed for Amazon store integration to give the site a seamless feel.
Product Features
Since hearing aids are something that people generally need but don’t necessarily want, the goal was to make the features feel a bit more enticing.
There were so many features we wanted to focus on to really show how great the product was, but it was a lot of information. Keeping the ease-of-use of the product at the forefront felt like the strongest selling point.
Keeping our target audience in mind, I tried to find stock that represented these people and their interests while making the text quickly scannable.
The technical designs paired with some story-style stock photos made the product feel technically sound, but still approachable.
The Rest of the Website
There are over 2 dozen webpages to date that all needed to be customized with different features. I designed and integrated these into the site while keeping true to the branding.
Amptify Integration
This was something that was added onto after the site was done. Since it was a sort of trial partnership, we integrated it as simply as possible. It wasn't meant to take center stage as we didn't want the user to get overwhelmed with yet another step before they even started their hearing aid journey.
Mega Menu (navigation)
The navigation changed a few times based on the requests from the group, and the challenges and feedback that arose for our various users.
Amptify Screens + Integration
When Soundwave collaborated with Amptify, I was asked to make a series of Amptify-branded screens for the product's otoTune App. The goal was to get the user to enroll in Amptify as part of a aural rehabilitation, and would allow them to keep one account for both apps. I did think it was asking a lot of the user to have to think about another app, so we gave them an option to sign up later.
Unmute Your World Campaign
I've created so many designs for Soundwave - here is a small sample of Google Ads, etc. below. Our target audience is people who aren't severely hearing impaired, but have mild to moderate hearing loss. They are younger, active, and good at what they do.
App Refresh
I was asked to refresh the app design. I kept most of the UX, outside of a couple of things, but brightened the UI to feel a little more modern, clean, and on brand. Turns out it was a miscommunication and the backend engineers weren't ready for a refresh. I still like the design though.
The screen on the right is the original.
