Barratt Homes – website redesign

Client: Barratt Homes
Website: Barratt Homes
Services: User research, User Experience design, visual design, Website development, website maintenance and support.

The Brief

Redesign three of Barratt Homes’ websites across the same common platform. Firstly starting with David Wilson Homes and Ward Homes, followed by the redesign of the main Barratt Homes website.

For all three websites LBi has been asked to redesign the user experience, create a new brand identity, build, test and then implement the websites on a common platform.

The Solution

So, how can you design the same user experience to fit three brands with different audiences, all with varying needs and goals? Well, that was the fun part. With differing audiences and needs we focused on one of the brands within the group using it as a good foundation to lead the experience. Then when we came to the redesign of the other two brands, we based much of our thinking on the first brand that we focused on. We adapted functionality that was built to fit the brand voice and user goals of the brands. All three websites shared common page templates and modules, but were styled and had a different look and feel.

Expert review

To start off with we carried out an expert review of the current group websites, as well as their competitors. We looked at key features such as Search/ browse, Campaigns and offers and individual property information. With these features we assessed each website and gave it a score using a traffic light system: red – pretty bad, amber – ok, I guess and green – good usability. This was a pretty comprehensive review and in the end it gave us a good understanding of what else is out there and what others are doing well compared to our clients’ websites.

Expert review slides up on the glass wall for inspiration

Pen portraits and user journeys

After the expert review, we went on to creating pen-portraits. These were designed solely so that we could create user journeys and then design interactions around them. Don’t worry, the pen-portraits were later validated by user research, which was great.

We created user journeys based on our pen portraits to help us think about the interface that we needed to create and the specific interactions we needed to design.

Generating ideas and collaborating with Designers

The Experience Architects (EA’s) worked closely with Designers on the team looking at key user journeys and sketching out those interactions, which was really helpful and a great way of working.