Redesigning
Active Based Learning's Website:
Are we targeting the right people?
ABL is one of the biggest distributors for learning labs and children's exercise equipment with a vast network of clients from over 50 States in the USA and some clients abroad. With a website that dates back to 2009, they have incredible engagement. However, their sales aren't coming directly from their website, so what's the issue? During my time at Half Dreaming Creative Agency, we embarked on a mission to find out why their website had low retention, and suggested redesigns to better fit their clientele.
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Role
UX Researcher
UX/UI Designer
Data Analyst
Timeline
June - August 2025
Team
Product Manager
Graphic Designers
UX Designers
Tools
Microsoft Clarity SEMrush
Framer
The Hypothesis
ABL had a very unique business model. Most of their sales (around 80%) were made through direct calls and usually in bulk. They came to us with a question, why was the retention for their website low?
They had professional development and supportive resources that informed the individual educator, but was this really who was buying their products?
We had three hypotheses as to what was happening.
ABL sales were not being made to individual teachers.
There is fricton-driven engagement that explains low bounce rate but also low retention.
People were contacting ABL to make purchases instead of online.
Using LookerStudio and Google Sheets, we found that:
49.9% of ABL clientele were County or District Board members.
38% of total revenue were made up of County or District Board members.
38.4% of sales came from offline sources.
The Business Analysis
Validated assumptions 1 & 2: Most clients are
County or District Board Members, NOT teachers, and more than 1/3 of revenues were offline sales.
The Website Audit
We used Microsoft Clarity to view HeatMaps, Session Recordings, and overall site statistics.
Analyzed 30+ Hours of recording sessions.
Recorded 3 main user
pain points.
Identified top 13 most important pages to preserve SEO.
Main Pain Points
Long session recordings (10 - 30+ minutes), Multi-page browsing, lacking add-to-cart action.
From 8 main navigation buttons, we cut the content down to 5, keeping track of important links within the main pages to preserve SEO.
We created a "Yellow Brick Road" operation, nudging users to contact ABL for purchases or easily set up sales calls. We also focused on automating task for users such as requesting a quote directly from the product page (many users arrive at the ABL page from organic search of specific products).
High engagement driven by confusion
Reduce cognitive load
Create clear and intuitive user flows
Unclear site structure
Users struggle to purchase products
Unintuitive interactive elements
Users scroll infinitely through navigation categories, they use the search function early but still can't find what they need.
Repeated clicks on non-interactive elements, elements missing states (hover, loading,…)
Recordings showed confusion in navigating the products page and difficulty adding products to cart. After an excessive amount of time, they submitted their information in the contact form.
Informative Metrics
5.4% of users
"Submit contact form"
0.95% of users "Add to cart"
Focus Areas
Validated assumptions 2 & 3: Most clients are filling out the contact form
to receive quotes, or exit out due to cognitive overload.
The Solution
We redesigned ABL's website based on our findings.
Redesigned the Site Map to nest important content under larger categories and simplified content.
-> Easier for users to find information.
Initiated the "Yellow Brick Road" operation due to high demand for contacting ABL directly.
-> All pages lead to the contact page.
Changed website content to reflect products targeted to District & County Board members.
-> Products have "get quote" options, professional development page targets schools instead of individuals
Our Deliverables
After receiving positive feedback from our client, we have been transferring our designs over to Shopify. We created the UI for 13 pages with the most engagement, and sent over the prototype for a case where users request a quote.
The lesson
As my first project since pursuing UX Design and human-computer interaction, I was happy I could take a lot of my quantitative and economics knowledge with me. Since then, I've see how intertwined design is and how necessary it is to learn each team member's language when working a project. This project pushed me to understand the development aspects of a site, how to use new tools to prototype, and being able to transform data into intentional designs.
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