Before: two separate landing pages, one for mentees and one for mentors.
Content Design
Thrive Out Loud needed a new landing page. It was launching a new name and narrowing its focus. At the same time, the site was going through an information architecture update. I worked on updating the home page to reflect these new organizational needs.
As the UX writer, I was solely responsible for updating the page's content. I created wireframes, wrote copy, and collaborated with our design team.
2 weeks.
Thrive Out Loud aims to connect queer young adults, aged 18-25 in the U.S., with career mentors from the queer community.
Changes were underway when I worked on the home page. The platform was separating itself from its parent charity, moving from "Sean's Legacy Mentorship Platform" to "Thrive Out Loud". It was also narrowing its focus to provide 100% LGBTQ+ career mentorship (previously, it was open to student mentees and ally mentors).
Information architecture changes also saw us moving from two separate landing pages (one for mentors, one for mentees) to a unified home page.
Thrive Out Loud is a Tech Fleet project. Tech Fleet is a not-for-profit dedicated to creating opportunities for people to gain real-world tech experience. They partner with other not-for-profits seeking tech solutions and put together teams of volunteers to deliver them. I joined Thrive Out Loud during the project’s fourth phase.
Before: two separate landing pages, one for mentees and one for mentors.
The new home page needed to:
Past user research was available, providing target audience insights:
To understand the user journeys, I spoke with internal stakeholders. I learned that mentors were being actively recruited, but mentee outreach was limited. This meant that mentees would land on the home page much earlier in their journey than mentors. For them, the website might be their first touch point with Thrive Out Loud.
To inform word choice moving forward, search-word analytics was conducted. Previously, the platformed used "LGBTQIA+" and "queer" to refer to its community. New research pointed towards “queer” and “LGBTQ+” as the most commonly used and understood terms.
I looked for ways to improve scannability, reduce cognative load, and get users from a to b faster. Respect is a key pillar of the brand voice. It was important to be respectful of the user's time.
I had to decide who to talk to first: mentors or mentees. Based on the different user journeys, mentees were chosen as the priority, since they're less familiar with the platform.
Finally, I pulled on the available user insights to reframe benefits that would speak to both user groups.
Research indicated the home page successfully appeals to the target audience. They particularly resonated with the platform being 100% LGBTQ+ and liked the way it was called out.
