Client: WhyHotel (now Placemakr)

Project: Landing Page Redesign

Capabilities: Stakeholder Presentations, Research, Personas, Content Strategy, Content Model, Wireframing, Copywriting

WhyHotel (now Placemakr) is a hospitality startup that works with apartment buildings in up-and-coming neighborhoods to help property managers offer a percentage of their units to short-term and extended stay travelers.

As a result, their website found itself catering to multiple audiences. This created a challenge, especially as they prepared to launch two new locations. Plus, in this industry, property pages need to do some heavy lifting and must be incredibly conversion-focused, ideally without sacrificing on tone of voice or brand promise.

I worked with their team to define their primary audiences, wireframe new property page templates, and then write the copy.

A high-level look from start to finish

Because the bulk of this project centered around the actual property pages, I thought it might be helpful for you to see them from start to finish. The first thumbnail below was their existing page, then my content model, then the two drafts of the wireframes, and finally the updated page designed.

Browse the images and then join me for a little more commentary on the project.

Developing useful copywriting personas

After carefully outlining the requirements of the project - what would make it a success, what was the timeline, resources at our disposal, approval process, etc. - I knew the first step needed to be defining the audience.

This started on my kitchen counter as I poured through hundreds of online reviews, past workshops, some previous brand strategy work they’d done, and a few other sources (yep, my kitchen counter gets a little messy).

The Persona Framework

Once I’d finished the post-it note rampage, I moved things digital. I love using Mural for something like this and I mocked up a quick template.

I determined that the most important parts to include in the personas were the following (remember, the goal here is usefulness):

• An overarching statement, a summary

• Any criteria that was shared by both audiences

• The job, habits, situation, first thought, emotional/social/functional requirements, gains, pains, opportunities and popular alternatives - for each persona (there were two of them)

• Then a quick user journey for both personas, thinking through consideration all the way to post-purchase recommendation

Here is what I ended up with…(sorry, needed to blur it out to protect confidentiality)

Update 5-11-2021

The co-founder and president of WhyHotel appeared in an interview and, when asked about the target audience, he used the language from this persona document almost verbatim. It’s always a really cool feeling to hear your work being used in the wild knowing that is used to exist on sticky-notes on my kitchen counter.

Here’s the clip (he talks to the audience segments at the 5-minute mark):

Making effective wireframes

Similar to the persona work above, the wireframe starts on post-it’s and yellow notepads. Why? Because you don’t want to get locked in to anything yet. Keep it nimble, move things around, make sure you have everything represented and basic user CTA’s figured out.

Moving from content model to wireframe

At this stage, I was ready to actually start designing the wireframes. I love using Balsamiq for projects like these. Why? Well, for one, because I can work really quickly in their tool. Two, because it keeps the review process focused on the copy and page template rather than anything too design-related. Three, Balsamiq Cloud allows me to share the wireframe with anyone else for review, commenting, etc. Super easy.

Here were the key aspects we decided to incorporate into the pages:

• We determined that each page needs to tell the whole story rather than just give basic details about a single property

• Travelers have many questions, and not all of those can be answered in normal copy. We created an FAQ section directly confronting unasked questions.

• Since the name “WhyHotel” asks a question, we needed to answer that question on the page

• We needed to group together the “amenities” and tell a story with them

• We wanted to come across as locals who knew the neighborhood. The map section we developed does this amazingly well. (we actually created a questionnaire to send to people who lived by the buildings to get their take on the best spots)

• We wanted to give more page space to the benefit of a WhyHotel stay rather than to the specific “features” of each room type. This was a massive shift from the current page design

As a reminder, the wireframes and final design are located at the top of this post.

In Summary

• This process may seem excessive to some, but those are the ones who end up with ineffective, clumsy, messy landing pages. The process exists to bring to light the essentials.

• As I mentioned in the B2B Growth Strategy post, I think a lot about longevity now. And while I was incredibly happy with our results in this project, due to the company rebranding (moving from WhyHotel to Placemakr), much of this work got replaced. Not all of it, but enough to make me sad.

• Lastly, we must never forget the user perspective, especially in our industries where more trust is required, such as travel. Picture yourself booking a place you’ve never heard of, showing up after dark, looking for a sign or lobby or parking, needing to know how to get into your room, not to mention you’re incredibly hungry and tired at this point. How can we empathize with this very real person? Make sure your content strategy, copywriting, and user journey take things like this into consideration.

Looking for a strategic copywriter to improve your landing pages?

This is what I love to do. Send me an email - derek@plain.run