Mercedes-Benz
A REDESIGN FOR ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE BRANDS.
MBUSA.com is a central destination for customers – where they engage with the brand, research products and take meaningful steps towards ownership. The redesign of MBUSA.com was the most significant change to the site in more than 7 years. When a wholesale redesign became necessary, we made sure that our design approach was informed by rigid user testing and data analysis.
Project: Website redesign for Mercedes-Benz passenger cars, US and Canada
Role: VP, Senior Creative Group Director, Experience
Activities and Deliverables: My overall responsibilities on the account include overseeing the UX/UI for the Mercedes-Benz US and Canada digital platforms including Mercedes-Benz Financial Services and Sprinter Vans, responding to the needs of our clients for any given week, and leading a team of UX directors and designers. Due to the high priority of this particular assignment, I became actively involved in the day-to-day design process. This included attending daily design reviews, facilitating workshops with clients, organizing user testing, scrutinizing the data with my Data Science colleagues, and running sketching sessions.
The global navigation prior to redesign.
Our Challenge
While redesign and redevelopment - versus incremental optimization - carry a high degree of risk due to years of familiarity with site visitors and millions of visitors, a redesign was deemed necessary for the following reasons:
The look and feel was outdated and did not reflect a premium luxury brand.
The previous design had reached the limit for incremental enhancements.
We needed for a scalable solution for expanding model lineup.
The new design needed to provide a foundation for e-commerce.
Our approach needed to be mobile-first, responsive, and accessible (ADA AA Compliant).
The site needed to be optimized for speed performance for both mobile and desktop
User Testing and Participatory Design
In order to refine the designs, we conducted four usability test sessions with 16 total participants throughout the design process.
Age ranges 25-75 years old
Luxury vehicle owners
4 locations: Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, New York
Short introduction and brief qualitative review – vehicle shopping and digital platform preferences
Participants were asked to interact with the navigation, and designs were tested iteratively
Asked to search for various tools and content on both mobile and desktop
In addition post-launch user testing was conducted versus the UK website (in addition to homepage, class/model pages, BYO and Inventory/Find a Dealer)
Sketching and information architecture workshop.
Final Design - Homepage
Monitoring the Data
In addition to multiple rounds of user testing we carefully monitored performance of the new designs. Since so many changes were made to the information architecture and contents of the site, some areas key destinations within the site saw increased traffic while there were declines in other areas. Over a period of 3 months, the user experience team worked along side the data sciences team to find the issues and optimize the site experience.
Heatmap used to show user engagement. This helped to inform optimization recommendations.
The Impact
As a result of our efforts and in addition to achieving all time high record leads and visits to the site, MBUSA.com achieved the number one ranking in J.D. Powers’ Manufacturer’s Website Evaluation Study in 2020 in both the luxury and mass market categories for the first time in the brand’s history.
Postscript
When possible I like to own and use the products of brands that I work for. However, Mercedes-Benz vehicles are outside of my price range. The next best thing: sponsored by Razorfish’s tuition reimbursement program, my creative colleague and I went to AMG Driving Academy at the famous La Guna Seca Raceway in California where we drove several laps in more than a dozen AMG high performance vehicles. This was the AMG GT-R Roadster. Learn more about AMG Driving Academy here.
