Re-Designing Madhat Girls

After many people were coming up to me (boyfriend, fb friends etc) telling me the website links were broken, the images were overlapping on top of the text, people weren’t finding the directory or signing up to errors. I decided to try and completely re-design the website, re-look at the UX and remove redundant sections

Currently, the website uses a directory template and multiple plugins that I had hacked so much they’re unrecognisable and buggy. Now loading the site is super heavy on the server and probably putting people off!

So, after some tweaking today this is how the current site looks – this is manageable right?

That wasn’t the re-design

LOL! Gotcha – you thought I re-designed it into that basic wordpress default template? HEH think again. This is only the beginning :'(

No More Directory

I am removing the directory until further notice. Mainly because web hosting is costly and I am offering images and server space which is eating up my mbs – I may or may not re-introduce the directory but I will think about it. I know this was how the website started and there are businesses that I have listed which is a shame but none of them has re-visited the website since listing their websites anyways. Sayonara (until the website builds up momentum)

Madhat Girls Website

Now The Art of Working Women exhibition is fully underway and set to launch in 3 months, the website really needs to be turned into a destination for the interested public. Hopefully, after they attend the exhibition they will know the name Madhat or look it up. I just looked at the poster and I’m thinking perhaps I should add a “MADHAT GIRLS PRESENTS” at the top or at least put the logo somewhere so people know who funded the event.

The Purpose of the Exhibition

The purpose of the exhibition is to promote awareness and get those on the “posh” side of Woolwich into the “original woolwich” and then to get the community in Woolwich to just…turn up and have a look. We want to do this to bridge the gap between the divide in the social classes of the community I live in. I am from a Working class background and I’m pretty sure a lot of the people who live in the Royal Arsenal bit are middle class. It’s gated and when you walk past those gates – the whole area feels like an entirely different world. I then want to drive people to use the Wandertale audioblogging app created by a girl I met on a female entrepreneur facebook group, this is the introduction of “tech tools” to the viewer as well as the possibility they can take a bit of the exhibition home with them.

Furthermore, I’d like to drive people to sign up to the email list as I will be pushing out content about the locals for the global and also bringing global news to the locals. The whole idea is an attempt to bridge the gap between two diverse but important parts of the community and bringing everyone together through art and business.

The Purpose of the Website

I guess, initially, the purpose was the directory but now after writing more and more content and enjoying that but also really NOT enjoying the manual labour of checking and approving new listings and members on the website – it will become an online magazine aka. MHGzine. I was thinking of having a digital .pdf magazine bi-monthly but it’s quite hard to write this much! So I’m thinking there would be two a year one in April for the Spring/Summer and then one in October for the Autumn/Winter version. In the meantime, the website should be an experimental ground. The main reason for the website is hoping to inspire budding side hustlers to grow their side hustles so it becomes a full-time thing. We are also trying to drive signs ups so that we have direct access to the email boxes of this audience and can speak out to them, invite them to new events etc. Most of all offering good quality educational, inspiring OR useful information.

The Product

There is no product :/ I guess the magazine and the exhibition are the products for now but none of those makes money. In fact, I’m putting all my savings into the two lol. Let’s call them passion projects!

The Funnel

I think before I design the UX of the website I need to learn about funnels. I am currently following a FREE UX Evidence-Based Redesign Udemy course which has recommended this article about Google Analytics Funnels to read.

I’ve discovered that I need a Goal Funnel which is a series of pages I expect my users to follow to complete a non-transactional goal of signing up to an email or signing up to download a free ‘pdf’

In the actual Google Analytics, I found it under:

Admin > Goals > +New Goal > Engagement > Newsletter Sign Up

I used this to create two funnels ones for Newsletter Sign up and one for Exhibition ticket sign up. I feel like every time I try to learn ONE thing – it just does off into a tangent and I start learning about something else. It’s insane how much of this data, UX business is interlinked.

Is this a funnel?

Social Media -> Blog Post -> Sign Up

Questions

What I am curious to know is…regarding a blog post do I need to set up individual funnels on google analytics/strategically or does it just pinpoint start and endpoints – HELP I am so confused 🙁