Project: ResDiary
Project: ResDiary
#UX #UI #B2B #HOSPITALITY #SAAS #TABLE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM #GLOBAL
Crafting a Global, Scalable Website for Hospitality Professionals
Our solution transformed ResDiary’s fragmented web presence into a user-centric platform, delivering tailored experiences that addressed the unique challenges of their global audience and empowering internal marketers.
Role:
UX/UI designer
Key Deliverables:
UX Research and discovery, competitor analysis, analytic analysis, creating user personas and user journeys, card sorting, sitemap creation, low-fidelity wireframing & high-fidelity UI mockups, usability testing, design systems.
Date & Duration:
2022 - 8 months
Tools used:
XD, Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Mural & Loop 11
Tools used:
Account Director, Creative Director, Head of Digital Experience, Content writer, Junior designer and Developer
The Challenge
In the highly competitive table management software market, ResDiary aimed to differentiate itself and outshine competitors. Their website architecture was fragmented, lacked a global standard and couldn’t be managed easily by internal teams.
Uncovering the Insights:
What Drives Our Users?
Key insights were gathered from ResDiary's brand tracking survey of 100 participants across ANZ, along with our own stakeholder workshops and interviews with six hospitality professionals. The participants were mainly owners and venue managers which included a mix of in-market and prospective users, with a focus on single venue operators.
Key insights
There is low brand awareness of ResDiary in ANZ “We are not front of mind”
Hospitality owners are not technical which makes decision making/ adoption challenging
Ease of use, affordability and positive reviews are most important drivers to adopt a TMS
1 in 3 looks for positive reviews (online or otherwise)
1 in 2 wants to know you are affordable – that should be made clear in self-service
SevenRooms
SevenRooms targets upscale and enterprise-level hospitality businesses. They stand out for their advanced CRM, guest profiles, and marketing automation tools.
Key website notes:
Credible content like success stories, webinars, research, news, blogs that will drive users to return to the site
Clean, modern look and feel with a consistent and strong brand identity is carried out through backgrounds, imagery, content tile shapes etc.
The visual & typographic hierarchy directs the user to the required action, these include Headings, sub-headings, primary & secondary CTA buttons and hyperlinks
How does the ResDiary experience stack up to others in market in right now?
Tock
Tock differentiates itself by offering prepaid reservations, ticketing, and dynamic pricing, which helps venues reduce no-shows and boost revenue. It targets high-end restaurants, wineries, and hospitality venues.
Key website notes:
Great use of colours and imagery that brings the site to life
Font legibility is compromised with the condensed and tightly spaced header font
Excessive scrolling and unnecessary gaps could lose users
Now Book It
Now Book It is a restaurant reservation and table management system (TMS) that focuses on providing an easy-to-use booking platform targeting small to medium-sized restaurants and hospitality venues. They have a similar market focus but with more advanced regionalisation capabilities.
Key website notes:
Readability isn't optimal on some pages exceeding line length best practise.
Simple and basic website though has great use of interactions such as with scroll animations, videos, hover-over effects, image carousels which will engage and allow the user to stay longer
Takeaway: ResDiary's strength lies in its affordability, ease of use, and regional customisation for small to medium-sized hospitality venues. ResDiary’s website could stand out from it’s competitors by showcasing regional customisation capabilities, clear messaging, real-world use cases, transparent pricing and strong customer support.
The Project Goal
Create a user-friendly global website that allows for both regionalisation and easy maintenance by internal teams, ensuring it is a one-stop hub for all things ResDiary.
Business Drivers:
Growth-focused: With focus on B2B, ResDiary is now investing in its digital channels, with its website as the core platform for engagement.
Empathy Through Research
We developed three key personas based on data from initial research and interviews. These personas represent the broader goals and characteristics of our user base, allowing us to build empathy, recognise behaviour patterns, and humanise the target audience.
Key Insight: The hospitality industry was deeply impacted by COVID, businesses need solutions that help them work smarter, not harder. Simplicity, clear communication, transparency, and support are critical.
Card Sorting for Clarity
A card-sorting exercise with six external hospitality participants provided valuable insights that guided our decisions in creating an intuitive navigation structure.
Information Architecture
The card-sorting exercise gave us key insights to prioritise and structure the sitemap, ensuring it met user needs. We incorporated a secondary navigation to support existing customers (a primary persona) and regionalisation. Pricing transparency was emphasised, and we streamlined the feature set to create a simpler, more focused user experience.
How might we workshop
The aim of this session was to ignite creativity and innovation by creating an open, collaborative space where stakeholders and the cross-functional team could freely explore bold ideas. This safe space allowed us to generate fresh ideas, address challenges, and explore new opportunities for the project.
Digital Wireframes
Drawing from our persona insights, we prioritised key elements like transparent pricing, easy demo booking, and clear, digestible feature categorisation and explanations. These priorities shaped the wireframing phase, where we created adaptable templates that support diverse content needs. This flexibility ensures the website remains easy to update and maintain by internal marketing teams, keeping it future-ready.
Stakeholder Feedback: Having collaborated closely with stakeholders throughout the process, the overall structure and ideas aligned with their expectations. However, introducing pricing on the website for the first time required careful consideration. We went through several iterations to find the optimal presentation, factoring in variables like currency, billing cycles, reservation volume, and feature sets to ensure clarity and flexibility.
Crafting a Captivating First Impression
Standing out from the competition was crucial for ResDiary, so making a strong first impression on the homepage became a top priority. I explored various hero elements, experimenting with a mix of people, product visuals, and combinations of both. While we worked within ResDiary’s core brand identity, the client encouraged us to push the boundaries and elevate their look and feel to achieve a contemporary and clean aesthetic. During this process, we tested vibrant highlight colours in the initial iterations. Once the hero visuals were finalised, I also explored animation options to add dynamic, engaging elements to the header.
Bringing Ideas to Life:
The High-Fidelity Vision
With the client's trust to push creative boundaries, the design phase became exciting. We showcased the product through sleek, animated snapshots, offering users a transparent glimpse of its interface. To visually communicate ResDiary's core values, we crafted a layered approach that combined the end user, technology, environment, and key benefits into distinctive imagery throughout the website. This strategy effectively brought ResDiary's values to life, resonating with the audience and reinforcing trust.
Usability Testing
I conducted usability testing on the staging link across two core regions, Australia and the UK, to evaluate how users navigated key tasks like exploring pricing, using global functionality, and booking a demo. The test results provided valuable insights, which guided design iterations to improve overall user experience and task completion.
Study type: Combination of moderated and unmoderated testing using the Loop11 platform
Location: Australia & UK | Remote
Participants: 6
Length: 30 mins
Affinity diagramming
Using affinity diagramming, I organised usability testing findings into key themes, allowing me to quickly spot high-priority issues and refine the design. Overall feedback was positive: participants found navigation intuitive and successfully completed tasks like booking a demo, logging in, and switching languages. The pricing page was well-received, with features like the pricing slider and monthly/annual toggle standing out. However, participants faced challenges with the sticky tiles on smaller screens, and the testing surfaced valuable insights on improving the findability of contact info, customer hub, and integrations, as well as feedback for enhancing the "Who We Serve" pages.
Finalising the design
Collaborating closely with stakeholders, we refined the designs to address key pain points identified in testing. These final adjustments ensured a smoother, user-centric experience before launching the site.
What Went Well
Collaborating closely with a supportive client who trusted our expertise made the process both enjoyable and productive.
Access to internal stakeholders and customers in both Australia and the UK provided invaluable insights, allowing us to address the needs of ResDiary’s global market effectively.
What Could Be Improved
Unfortunately, overall website metrics weren’t established at the project outset, limiting our ability to measure quantitative success effectively.
During usability testing, we encountered several no-shows and last-minute cancellations, affecting data quality. In future projects, I plan to recruit a larger pool of participants to mitigate this issue and enhance the reliability of our insights.
“Jess is amazing, she delivers. She facilitated feedback from multiple stakeholders, managed the time zones well and helped to make the process easy.”
— Rebecca Zeitunian, Regional Head of Growth, APAC
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