OVERVIEW
Summary
The cannabis industry in the State of Maine is in an adolescent stage. There is a new dispensary popping up on every street corner, seemingly every week. Business owners are trying to get in on the ground floor of this lucrative industry and establish themselves before the inevitable reckoning that comes with a saturated market sweeps them away.
Maine Cannabis Exchange is no different. Peter Ingram, the owner, presented me with an opportunity to put some of my newly learned UX skills to use; redesign the Maine Cannabis Exchange website. He knew it needed some improvements, but didn’t know where to start. While I couldn’t guarantee an increase in revenue, I was confident in my ability to make a website experience more enjoyable and easier to navigate.
Maine Cannabis Exchange is no different. Peter Ingram, the owner, presented me with an opportunity to put some of my newly learned UX skills to use; redesign the Maine Cannabis Exchange website. He knew it needed some improvements, but didn’t know where to start. While I couldn’t guarantee an increase in revenue, I was confident in my ability to make a website experience more enjoyable and easier to navigate.
Role
I was responsible for leading and conducting all aspects of the user experience redesign process, including implementation on the live website. I reported to the only stakeholder, Peter Ingram, owner of Maine Cannabis Exchange.
Duration
This project started in June 2022. The first round of redesigned pages went live at the end of September 2022.
What am I working with?
Before diving in to the redesign, I wanted to get the full picture of what was already on the website by conducting a content audit. This would be a valuable document to have when it came time to decide how to simplify and consolidate the content on the website.
I found by looking at the website objectively and describing the content on each page immediately started forming a mental image of what could be consolidated or removed from the current user experience. The owner of Maine Cannabis Exchange, Peter, wanted to be closely involved so we immediately started planning the actions needed to implement the experience improvements I had proposed.
How do users navigate the website?
After a few stakeholder/designer meetings about the comments I made from the content audit, I decided it would be best for Peter to visualize the current website sitemap.
The Information Architecture of the current website was complicated and likely confusing, so this visualization was extremely helpful for Peter to see the improvements that needed to be made in the navigation.
Afterwards, I wanted to conduct a card sorting activity with Peter, but due to time constraints I went ahead with proposing a refined sitemap and going over my reasoning with Peter.
The Information Architecture of the current website was complicated and likely confusing, so this visualization was extremely helpful for Peter to see the improvements that needed to be made in the navigation.
Afterwards, I wanted to conduct a card sorting activity with Peter, but due to time constraints I went ahead with proposing a refined sitemap and going over my reasoning with Peter.
What does the competition look like?
With so many cannabis dispensaries in the local area, I wanted to look at what the competition were doing to inspire our future website improvements. I took a detailed look into what was and wasn’t working for the user experience of these websites.
This exercise prompted further conversations with Peter about what the goals are of users visiting the website and how that can align with the overall business goals of the company.
This exercise prompted further conversations with Peter about what the goals are of users visiting the website and how that can align with the overall business goals of the company.
What is a user's goal when visiting the website?
We need to understand why users are visiting the website, and how they feel when navigating through each operation. A user journey map can show us the ideal use cases of a user’s experience when visiting the website. Putting yourself in the mindset of how someone might react to certain design choices is especially important when redesigning an already existing website.
User Journey Map
Time to make improvements!
With the opportunities identified in the competitive analysis, a restructured sitemap, and the users’ theoretical journey we can start making improvements to the website.
What did we learn from this project?
• Since this is my first website redesign as a UX Designer, I learned a lot about the pacing of projects and started developing my professional workflow.
• Working within a timeline, collaborating with stakeholders, and deciding what research would be valuable were all things I had experience with as an engineer, but this was my first experience with all of these skills as a UX Designer.
• Since there were no developers involved with this project, I learned how to effectively use Squarespace’s website builder. I also applied basic CSS code to further improve the visual design of the website.
