CASE STUDY

Kaire & Heffernan, PLLC

Project type: website redesign, rebranding, ADA, UI/UX
2023/24

Context:

This website redesign project began as an escalated project as the firm had lost confidence in the previous team that had worked on their site and, as such, had not updated their site in nearly ten years. The firm’s partners had very strong opinions about what they wanted to convey on the rebranded site, but had not come to a consensus amongst themselves as to what that direction should be. The one thing they agreed on was that they wanted to take on Morgan & Morgan – arguably, the most successful firm in Florida. Or, at the very least the most prolific in regards to advertising.

Challenges

While the firm was receptive to my recommendations, they did push back on removing animation from the site as they strongly felt that movement was an attention-grabber that added perceived value to their site. So, I would need to implement non-traditional animation techniques as a compromise. After our initial consultation, I designed a couple of homepage options for the firm to review, but upon presenting each option, the firm was unconvinced as to the direction of the new site and asked for an entirely new option. Ultimately, we used elements from all of the presented options in the finished site.

Consultation:

I spent much of my pre-production time, prior to our initial meeting researching the firm’s competition and the metrics the current site was displaying to assist in determining direction. I recommended a clearer focus on site readability, navigational organization, and visual presence. I also recommended that the flow and visual hierarchy be reworked to give the site a clearer narrative and more logical flow from top-to-bottom. Finally, the original site had a lot of traditional animation that was bogging down the site speed and so I initially recommended that we remove all animation from the site in order to help load time and get end-users to the needed information faster.

Project Scope:

• Clean up font usage and choose typefaces that were a better compliment to the new visual direction
• Craft a more engaging layout that showcased the firm’s practice, attorneys, and accolades
• Implement movement in a more interesting way that streamlined the site’s load time and that felt more in keeping with the rebranding
• Showcase the firm’s attorneys through more engaging biography layouts
• Rework the practice areas and other internal page layouts to better organize the vast amount of links and information being presented to end-users
• Clean up and better organize the firm’s blog
• Create an entirely new Spanish site that compliments and mirrors the English site, but that also feels like it is its own entity
• Create a clever and engaging 404 page