My Role
As UX Lead I oversaw the planning, research, and UX design on the project. I managed a UX Designer and we collaborated with other disciplines such as strategy, creative, technology, and account management to carry out a full site redesign from concept to development/QA.
The ChallEnge
Toyota and Lexus Dealerships rely on specialized technicians to staff their service centers. These technicians can have a lucrative and rewarding career but to take this path they typically have to train in a specialized TTEN program. Awareness of the programs is low, and even when a potential applicant knows about the program, knowing how to take the next step isn’t always clear.
Toyota came to us to help reimagine a website/content plan that would best serve the program by highlighting the benefits and career paths of technicians, locations where they can get an education, and clarifying the steps needed in order to apply.
Our Solution
We began by talking to various stakeholders: Current and past students, instructors, business managers. We learned about what frustrations they had, and how they would benefit from an updated web experience. We learned about how applicants found out about programs and what they did once they decided they wanted to apply.
We mapped the phases and needs of the stakeholders in a user journey that we used to base our UX design strategy for the project. We found that there were five key phases to a Student/Parent Journey: Research, Reach out, Enrollment, Decision, and Active Student/Alumni. During each stage the website would support the user with the information and actions needed for where they were in their journey.
Sitemap
We designed our sitemap to support the various phases and needs of the student journey. Based on our stakeholder interviews where we learned that students often seek a way to contact a school directly or to begin the enrollment process. We kept a primary contact method top of mind in the site navigation. We used the navigation to call attention to areas of information that pertain to what the user would be interested in learning about. We decided to tap into commonly asked questions and use that information to populate FAQs on the website, which also helped to build SEO equity for the site.
Wireframes
Homepage
The homepage greeted users with a contact form, the main KPI for the site. The page experience also allowed for discovery of content and supported the user’s various information paths depending on what stage of the journey they were in.
T-TEN Stories
One area that our research indicated is that prospective students put a lot of value on hearing feedback from current or former T-TEN students. By partnering with schools, we were able to bring authentic stories of what it’s like to attend the T-TEN program, and what opportunities were created because of a former student attending.
Values Page
We wanted to highlight compelling at-a-glance facts that could nudge a prospective student to take the next step. Things like potential earnings, likelihood of employment, etc.
Program Finder Tool
As the centralized web site for all program locations the experience also had the important role of allowing students, parents, and sometimes program stakeholders to locate participating programs around the country. The tool had a dual purpose of also highlighting dealer locations through a toggle mode. Our research showed that students often decide on an education program based on the proximity or concentration of potential dealers nearby.
Outcome
Post-launch the website has been an outstanding success. Because strategic decisions about site structure and content creation traffic to the site has increased over 3x following the redesign. Over 20k leads annually are submitted to programs and the site continues to be a great resource for program awareness and efforts toward attracting and retaining talent at Lexus and Toyota dealerships - an issue that has only been magnified during the pandemic.