Yang 2020 Homepage redesign
THE PROBLEM
2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s homepage was not landing well with traditional voting demographics. All they saw was a radical idea called “universal basic income” being proposed by an unknown politician.
Independent research in early voting states showed that Andrew Yang’s solutions to the country’s problems, while interesting and eminently logical, could not be accepted by rural voters until they could first trust the man behind the ideas.
The original homepage design for the Yang 2020 campaign.
The Research
An audit of the existing homepage revealed a number of pain points for newcomers to Yang’s platform: an unknown name in politics pushing disruptive social reform (while being introduced in the hero image as a body lost in the crowd), multiple nudges to donate or sign up with no natural lead-in or value propositions, and overall lack of visual hierarchy to guide the casual user.
Focus group testing in Iowa and New Hampshire, two important early voting states in the primary elections, revealed that:
Most registered democrats in those states were unfamiliar with Andrew Yang as a candidate.
Of those who had heard of Andrew Yang, none knew the important details of the Freedom Dividend (his form of universal basic income), outside of the concession that it was a radical concept.
All groups responded well to test ads depicting Andrew Yang as a family man and a non-politician, but negatively to ads focusing solely on the Freedom Dividend.
The Design DIRECTION
As the campaign’s design lead, I needed to make Andrew Yang’s website accessible to traditional voters by:
Changing the perception of Andrew Yang from a questionable unknown to a relatable American (husband, father, and patriot), immediately from the homepage.
Creating a sensible hierarchy and flow for new visitors wanting to learn about the candidate.
Giving visitors a reason to donate, or share their email information.
Improving readability by complying with WCAG standards and best practices, which would be particularly beneficial to older voters, whom the candidate needed to win over most.
With over 70% of the site traffic coming from mobile devices, the strategy was to push a redesign that was accessible, visually engaging, and mobile-first.
In addition, the content on the homepage would need to be friendlier to those not-yet unaccustomed to Yang’s policies, and be judicious about mentioning the Freedom Dividend and universal basic income.
ADDRESSING BUSINESS NEEDS
Business requirements called for nudges to sign up and/or donate at the beginning, middle, and end of the homepage. In addition, first-time visitors would see a welcome mat nudging for donations before seeing the default billboard, which itself contained an email capture form. While this conflicted somewhat with user needs, the nudges would make more sense when accompanied by a simple value proposition.
Redesigned nudges to donate or sign up, with added value prop.
DEPICTING ANDREW YANG
Informed by the research, I depicted the candidate in the redesigned homepage’s various sections as a family man, a patriotic leader, and a down-to-earth speaker who appeals to voters across the entire political spectrum.
One of the redesigned components on the homepage, used across several sections as shown here.
The Final Redesign
The final homepage redesign was an objective success, by the numbers. Results showed that donation click-throughs skyrocketed and held steady week over week, and, most notably, email signup rates doubled from the previous homepage’s average weekly signups.
The redesigned homepage on desktop.