The context
One of the most visited food content platforms in Quebec: a newsletter with 92,000 subscribers, a paid members’ area, advertising revenue, eighteen published books. A broad audience, often older, not always comfortable with digital tools.
The problem
The value proposition was hard to read. The very dense content was spread over three overlapping pillars. The paid subscription was barely visible and poorly understood. And customer service kept answering the same questions: an unsubscribe link no one could find, password resets, confusion between the free and paid offers.
In other words, the site was costing money every day, in lost subscriptions and support time.
What I did
I started by listening, in two places. First a scoping questionnaire with the client, to clarify the vision, goals and success criteria. Then a questionnaire for the customer service team, the people who hear the pain points first-hand: the most frequent requests, the most time-consuming ones, the exact words users use.
From there: three personas, a map of the sign-up and members’ area access journey, and the pain points ranked by frequency and impact.
Then the design: a complete overhaul of the information architecture around the three pillars, wireframes then high-fidelity mockups, and fixes for accessibility gaps (text sizes, contrast, mobile usability).
The constraint that shaped everything
A limited budget, and rebuilding the site was off the table. Every recommendation had to be applicable to the existing site by the developer already in place. That’s often clients’ real situation: you don’t start from scratch, you fix what’s already running.
The result
15 mockups and a redesign plan that could be applied without a rebuild, with success metrics defined with the client: session length and pages per visit, growth in paid subscriptions, fewer customer service requests.
