"It just doesn't flow."
A nutrition coach knew her website wasn't converting, but couldn't pinpoint why. Three CTAs led to three different destinations, sign-up lived on an external Google Form, and nothing on the site explained what you'd actually get. The problem wasn't the visuals. It was the architecture.
Brand
VC Nutrition by Maria Higgins
Used Tools
Team
Aleksandra Beiner (me)
Cassandra Carlson
Daniel Jin
Timeline
1 month (May – June 2025)
The Problem
"It just doesn't flow." Maria knew something was off, but couldn't name what.
Maria Higgins is a functional nutritionist with 8 years of experience. Her site was her main channel for discovery and booking, but visitors left without taking action.
They couldn't answer three basic questions:
Is Maria credible?
What do I actually get?
How do I sign up?
Heuristic evaluation
I audited the existing site and found friction at every step of the booking flow
I walked through Maria's site against Nielsen's heuristics. The findings explained why visitors weren't converting.
The site had five separate screens between landing and signing up, and each one introduced new friction.
Maria confirmed what the audit suggested: the site needed a story, not just a layout
Cassandra conducted the stakeholder interview. Maria's priorities came through clearly:
"Lacking a sales page" "Help achieve better story" "Main functions: link to work with Maria + join email list"
She described her ideal vibe as: Educational, Simple, Motivating, Sustainable.
The diagnosis: Maria's site wasn't broken. It was scattered. Content existed, but the structure didn't guide users toward action. That gap between having content and actually converting visitors became the core problem we needed to solve.
My Role
I worked alongside two teammates in a 1-month sprint. While we collaborated on research, I took ownership of:
Heuristic Evaluation : identified critical usability issues
Information Architecture : restructured navigation and user flows
Wireframes : created ~100% of layout explorations
Design System : built typography, color, and component library
High-Fidelity Screens : designed all final pages
Brand Refinement : tracked down original logo font and proposed new header treatment
Cassandra led client communication and Squarespace implementation. Daniel contributed to persona development and creative direction.
Research
User interviews. We talked to 5 people. What they said shaped every decision that followed.
I conducted 2 of 5 interviews. One participant, Claire, had a background in nutrition, which made her perspective on credibility especially sharp.
On what builds trust:
"I need to know why I should believe them. Sources like Harvard Health are intrinsically trustworthy because they have the panel and background expertise. If they don't list credentials, I leave." Claire
On what destroys trust:
"If one website says something very different from others, conflicting advice, that's a big red flag. People are very invested in their health." Claire
On user experience:
"Some sites make you scroll through a life story just to get to a recipe. I just want my recipe, not the blogger's entire backstory." Spencer
These weren't isolated opinions. The same three things kept coming up across every conversation: show your credentials fast, don't waste my time, and make the next step obvious.
Survey. 43 survey responses confirmed it: people leave sites that waste their time
I created the survey and distributed it through Slack and Instagram. One frustration dominated:
"Life story before recipe" appeared in 15+ responses:
"The whole story leading up to the recipe"
"Too much preamble"
"Recipe all the way down the page, loaded with autoplay ads"
"Having to scroll through a bunch of random stories/commentary"
This directly informed our Moscow Matrix. "Long-winded stories ahead of recipes" went into "Won't Have." Not because storytelling is bad, but because our users told us it gets in the way of what they came for.
Persona
We created Sophie, a composite of our research patterns. Sophie helped us align as a team on who we were designing for, but the specific design decisions came from the heuristic evaluation and direct user quotes.
The Redesign
How might we help busy users like Sophie quickly understand Maria's value and take action — without overwhelming them or breaking their trust?
Restructuring the architecture. The original structure had 3 CTAs leading to 3 different destinations, including an off-site Google Form
Users encountered "Work with Me," "Let's Connect," and "1-on-1 Nutrition Coaching," each routing somewhere different. The coaching sign-up led to an external Google Form with 10+ fields about health history, which completely broke the site experience.
We consolidated all paths into one clear flow: Home → Work With Me → Sign UpWhat I proposed and implemented:
Merged all coaching CTAs into a single "Work With Me" page
Replaced the external Google Form with an on-site pop-up (4 fields only)
Added a "Resources" section for free content and early engagement
Renamed "Blog" to "Articles" for clarity (users in our research found "Blog" ambiguous)
Refining the brand
The athletic logo didn't match the approachable coaching tone Maria wanted
VC Nutrition is a sub-brand of VC CrossFit. The existing logo used CGF Locust Resistance, a condensed, aggressive font that fit CrossFit but felt wrong for personalized nutrition coaching for moms and busy women.
The problem: Cassandra had been using an approximation font because we didn't have the original. The logo looked off.
My solution:
Used reverse image search to find the exact original font (CGF Locust Resistance)
Created proper horizontal lockup
Proposed splitting the brand presentation: "Maria Higgins" in header, "VC Nutrition by Maria Higgins" in footer
This balanced brand continuity with personal approachability, exactly what Maria's target audience needed.
Maria's response: "I love love love the look!"
Design System
A unified visual language reinforced the trust and clarity users needed
I created both the style guide and component library — ensuring every element supported our goals of credibility and simplicity.
Typography:
DM Serif Display (headings) — elegant, editorial feel
Helvetica Neue (body) — readable, modern
Color palette:
Soft neutrals as base — calm, approachable
Sage green accent — replaced the original hot pink, feels more grounded and wellness-oriented
Components:
Buttons (primary, secondary, text states)
Recipe cards with prep time, dietary tags
Testimonial carousel
Sign-up form with inline validation
Credential badges
Final Design
Team deliverable: Clean, focused pages built for conversion
This is the version we delivered as a team and Cassandra implemented on Squarespace.
Post-bootcamp: I expanded the design to include a full content ecosystem
After the team project ended, I continued refining the design to match my vision of what the site could be — adding features Maria mentioned wanting but we didn't have time to build.
What I added:
Recipe system with filtering by goal, diet, and season
Individual recipe pages with ingredients, steps, and download/print options
Resources section with free guides (Balanced Plate, Plate Formula for Fat Loss)
Enhanced About page with Mission, Vision, Promise framework
Article templates with full content layouts
Main Screens
Recipes Screens
Validation
Client feedback confirmed we solved the right problems
"I love love love the look! It's simple and the color scheme is great, the scrolling testimonial section I LOVE."
"SOOO excited to see this in action!"
— Maria Higgins
Usability testing revealed one opportunity we'd address in future iterations
Cassandra conducted a moderated test with Ariel (who we'd also interviewed earlier).
What worked:
✅ "Ooh, right away! Work with me." — CTA was immediately findable
✅ "I love the clean design... the real food... the pistachio color." — Visual direction resonated
✅ "Makes me want to work with her." — Trust was established
What could improve:
⚠️ "The credentials seems a little lackluster... I'd love to see that like an infograph."
This feedback directly informed my post-bootcamp iteration — I explored more visual ways to present Maria's qualifications.
Early Signals of Success
3→1
CTA paths consolidated
Three competing buttons on the homepage ("let's make a change," "1-on-1 Nutrition Coaching," "About Me") replaced with one repeating CTA and a single conversion path.
-60%
fewer form fields
Replaced an external Google Form (10 required fields, including open-ended questions and self-assessment scales) with an embedded 4-field pop-up. Removed the need for a Google login and eliminated context-switching.
6→11+
page types designed
Expanded from a basic 6-page site to 11+ page types, including a recipe system with search, filters, and structured recipe pages.
Reflection
What I'd do differently: Align research questions more tightly to business goals
Our user research asked broadly about "what people want from nutrition sites." This surfaced valid insights — like the "life story" frustration — but much of it applied to recipe sites, not coaching services.
Maria's core problem was selling 1:1 coaching, not serving recipes. In hindsight, I'd focus interview questions on: "What would make you trust a nutrition coach enough to pay for their services?"
The heuristic evaluation was actually more directly useful for this project than the general user research — it identified the exact friction points blocking conversions.
What I learned
Heuristic evaluation surfaces what stakeholders can't articulate.
Maria knew something was wrong ("it doesn't flow") but couldn't pinpoint that 3 different CTAs were confusing users. The audit made it concrete.
Trust is built through small, consistent signals.
Credentials, testimonials, professional photography, visual consistency — no single element creates trust, but their absence destroys it.
Sometimes a "design problem" is actually an architecture problem.
The original site didn't need better visuals — it needed a clearer structure. IA work was the real solution.
