Paraqlet Solutions Website

Overview

I designed an external-facing website for Paraqlet Solutions, a Seattle-based communications consulting firm, to promote the company and help potential clients learn about the company and request services. See the high-fidelity wireframes below. You can also visit the paraqlet.com website directly to see the output of my work.

Process

I began by collaborating with the team's UX Researcher and with the company's founder to set expectations around the user flow and the web pages I would create. These included a homepage, a Portfolio page (showing case studies of previous Paraqlet work), an About Us page (introducing the company's background, mission, and values), a Services page (outlining the domains of Paraqlet's work), and a Contact page (contact information and a form where users can send messages to an email alias).

The key user persona pain points I looked at addressing through the site were:

• Lack of cohesive narrative arc across social media presence

• Lack of clear structure and standardization in branding playbook

• Lack of insight into which stories resonate the most with audiences, and lack of knowledge about how to use audience insights to drive engagement and conversion

With work in brand storytelling and content creation, marketing strategies that resonate (esp. with BIPOC and values-driven audience), and strategic communications, Paraqlet itself is in a good position to address these pain points. The goal of the website, then, was to help small businesses like the one in the user persona discover what Paraqlet does and how it can help.

With this goal in mind, I created low-fidelity wireframes (see below) to visualize the information architecture of each page. This helped to provide a clear scaffolding on which to build the high-fidelity wireframes.

Next, I created high-fidelity wireframes (see above) by replacing the image and content placeholders with photographs and case study text (for the Portfolio page) provided by the founder. I followed the Paraqlet style guide when it came to choosing the typography and color scheme, ensuring a consistent look and feel throughout.

As mentioned above, the business goal was to enable small businesses to discover what Paraqlet could do for them based on prior Paraqlet work for similar organizations. Therefore, I placed the most visible CTA button at the top of the homepage leading to the Portfolio page, where users could read case studies. I also added a section for users to learn about Paraqlet with the CTA Discover Our Impact to help them quickly learn more about Paraqlet. From the homepage alone, there is a clear flow from learning about Paraqlet's prior successes, to learning about the company itself, to hearing what others have said, and finally to connecting with Paraqlet.

I iterated on the design of the site by integrating informal feedback from the Paraqlet team, aiming for a sleek and minimalist feel that demonstrated a strong information architecture and use of whitespace, so as not to overload the users' visual field with content. This, along with clear CTAs for buttons, would allow users to navigate the website easily. It also helps create a framework upon which Paraqlet can build as the company scales.

Conclusion

With the high-fidelity wireframes greenlit by the team, I prototyped it using Odoo's Website application. I harnessed UX best practices to efficiently iterate on designs while garnering stakeholder approval.