Sense/net Blog Redesigning sensenet.com: find the SN7 story of yours

Hello again! We've been working on restructuring SenseNet ECMS as a product for a while; now it's time to change the way we connect with people.The next milestone on our roadmap is to redesign our website in order to make it more streamlined and transparent for you. Our most important aim with the redesign is to provide you all the information you might need when looking for the open source, .NET based ecms that would fit your business needs and still provide a pleasant user experience.Designed by FreepikThe stories of our visitorsCreating a user experience that makes navigating through a site a comfortable journey can make a lasting impact on our visitors. If we can show them an interesting story that still conveys substantial information - well, that is the story that captures the mind instead of having to go through an endless list of dry facts.The whole reframing process was based on focusing on our visitors, to offer them a path that leads them seamlessly where they want to go. Our goal is to offer them a story with positive substance that inspires them and encourages them to come back to us and try out our product.You are the protagonist of the storyWe want to make you the hero of our story. Who are you? - at first this is what we needed to define. Only then could we possibly create the storyline of yours inside our one. We defined the sketch lines that can determine the characteristics of our visitors:The name of the protagonist and their slogan.Their motivation.Their personality.Their goals and dreams.Their fears and frustrations.The channels they use and challenges they struggle with.Our first hero is the Developer......who is looking for a super modern coding platform to build up-to-date business solutions. Who wants to find a well-designed architecture and enterprise-grade technical details even under the hood. Who wants to hand over great and long-lasting IT solutions to their customers.Our hero is the Partner......who wants an extendable platform with a transparent licensing and pricing system. Who is looking for an affordable solution and wants to get in touch with our sales department easily and quickly.Our hero is the Customer......who wants to buy an all-in-one solution for their company. Who wants to find all details about buying and running a SenseNet solution. Who wants to make sure that they get an easy-to-maintain IT solution.Visual and structural narrative in the Information ArchitectureWhat we needed is to bring creativity into the story. This is what will transform the experience from a simple repetitive navigation into the emotionally driven behavior that governs the users' actions.Designed by FreepikThe cornerstones that the UX designer's had to lay out while building this path for you are the following:Defining the solution we build for you (platform, app, etc.)Relationships between components (hierarchical or peer)The internal logical flow (the "magic" that moves the system)The art of designing the arc of user flowWe wanted to find out what motivations may lead to any of the several possible outcomes: how the offered choices influence our users' decisions, their turns and aims while using our website. In other words we described a whole narrative arc to see how this all will be resolved in the end of the journey.Why does a user arrive here?What are the pivotal decisions along their visit?What is the destination they are looking for?How can we help them reaching it?Working through these steps our goal was to resolve conflicts instead of creating new ones. We learned that the further we can minimize the friction and optimize the offered solutions on each point of the visitors' trip, the more smoothly and painlessly will they be led to a solution they want.What's next?We are at a very early stage but wanted to give you a glimpse of the task we set out to do. It is an interesting and challenging job and we would be thrilled if you shared your opinion, request or anything you have in mind during the process - either here in the blog or on any other channel.