Capital One
Worked with Capital One Small Business Bank (SBB) and ROI-DNA (digital agency) to redesign Capital One’s small business website.
What I did: Information architecture, Interaction design, Visual design
Project goals
Redesign the Capital One Small Business Bank website to increase site engagement by creating ways to guide small business customers towards the products that are right for their business.
Provide a clearer path for them to learn about the different products and how to sign up for them based on their location.
01. Research & Customer Insights
Recently collected customer research outlined several key pain points small business owners were facing such as an inability to know how to choose between products or experiencing hesitation in making decisions based on the uncertainty of a product's effectiveness.
I performed a review of the existing site and used the research as the foundation for the design solutions I created. To facilitate buy-in from the large number of stakeholders involved, I ensured design decisions were consistently backed by research findings.
02. Discovery & Understanding
After reading through the research and understanding the existing structure of the site, I proceeded to:
• Extract key points from the research
• Formulate possible solutions to use as the basis for brainstorming sessions
• Craft focused questions about the various product offerings, intentions of the site, and redesign goals
• Review and revise an existing redesign sitemap to align with the decisions made between the teams
I worked closely with the creative team at ROI-DNA to brainstorm possible solutions to best resolve the specific pain points customers were facing. I paired my understanding of the research findings with these ideas and presented them to the Capital One SBB and Capital One Enterprise Design teams.
03. Collaborate & Plan
Working with Capital One, we agreed on which page templates would be most beneficial to create and discussed the goals each page needed to accomplish.
04. Ideate
To proceed with enrolling in the product offerings found on the site, customers first needed to visit a branch in-person. Initial concepts focused heavily on elevating the visibility of the customer’s branch locations to facilitate with this process.
Indecision was also main factor the site needed to address. Solutions such as allowing customers to enter information in exchange for personalized results were well-received but ultimately removed due to time constraints with implementation.
The project was on an accelerated timeline so I worked directly with Capital One stakeholders to ensure design decisions were on track and iterated quickly based on feedback.
I designed solutions using the existing Capital One Design System and purposed new components which were ultimately used and incorporated into their system.
05. Demonstrating functionality
Throughout the project, I created Invision prototypes to help illustrate new features and to clarify desired functionality amongst the project team.
06. Customer needs & brand guidelines
I collaborated with the Capital One Enterprise Design team to ensure designs aligned with the existing component library and confirmed that any newly introduced variations on these components fit within the Capital One brand guidelines. I presented each iteration of the work directly to Capital One using key points from the research to support the design direction.
07. Mobile support
We worked with the Capital One design team to focus on which pages to design for mobile. My goal for this phase of the project was to design mobile versions of new components (ie: branch finder) or variations of existing components (ie: product cards) to illustrate to the Capital One team how these elements would appear on mobile.
Final thoughts
While leveraging existing customer research from the onset of the project certainly helped keep me focused throughout the design process, the 8 week timeline didn’t allow for us to review the new designs directly with customers. If time had allowed, we would have proceeded to confirm that our decisions were properly aligned with the site’s target audience as well as explore other options for providing customized product information to customers.
Throughout the project the Capital One Small Business Bank team commended us on the design solutions and timely execution of the deliverables. It was a satisfying challenge to create designs that successfully balanced the research findings, existing brand guidelines, and enterprise design constraints, all while maintaining focus on improving the customer experience.