• 10+ PF employee interviews

• 15+ PF franchisee interviews

• 10+ member interviews

• Landscape analysis

• Google Analytics reviews

• Content audit

• Sitemap development

• 30+ desktop & mobile wireframes

• 5+ in-person usability testing

• 10+ remote usability testing

1. Develop Frictionless Join Flow

Develop a painless join process, regardless of the device type to increase the % of successful online conversions

2. Offer a Rewarding Membership Experience

Quickly identify existing members and serve valuable content that will help them engage with PF and become brand advocates

3. Empower Franchisees

Offer franchisees an easy self-service solution to create flexible, trackable local content that fits within PF's brand

“Users should be able to join in 5 minutes so they dont put it off”

“We appeal to everyone — but our current site is not usable to everyone.”

“For 1st time members, we are competing with the couch… price is NOT the barrier.”

“We are completely missing the role of the site for current members today.”

“We dont care if people cancel.”

“Let’s get our brand beyond purple and $10/month… We have such diverse members!”

Competitive Analysis

We combed through PF's direct competitors (like Anytime Fitness & Lifetime Fitness), similar gyms in the fitness industry (like Equinox & Curves), and other best-in class subscription models (like ClassPass & Blue Apron) in order to identify PF's unique value proposition. We chose 5 key dimensions to analyze which relate directly to our main goal: get people to the site and get them to JOIN -- quickly and easily.

Key Target Audiences

We ended up breaking down our audiences even further by focusing on needs-based personas as it relates to converting new users via the website. During our user interviews we found there were 2 types of prospective members: 

Responsive Wireframes

The data led to our designing the wireframes with a mobile-first, desktop second approach while also designing key tablet breakpoints as needed. Since the old site was barely responsive, we knew the mobile traffic would rise significantly as we optimized the site for mobile as well. In the end I designed over 30 desktop and mobile wireframes for the project as seen below.

While the client insisted on the 'Join' button being plastered all over the site, our interviews proved users were most concerned with PF having a convenient location close to where they live or work. That's why the main call-to-action button on the site's homepage is 'Find Your Club'. We explained that once users were on the club page of their choice, the calls-to-action all change to 'Join Now'. If users are ready to join at any point while on the site, they can easily convert via 'Join Now' button in the sticky header, a common best practice for software and consumer-focused sites alike.

On the Find Your Club page we made it easiest for the user to find their preferred club location by enabling geolocation and IP detection. We also learned it was extremely important for the franchisees to have access and authority to customize their own Club Pages so each page is made up of modular components that can be edited by the franchisees themselves. The components include unique description amenities, photo galleries, and promotions. The franchisees know their locations, members, and prospective members better than anyone at the PF headquarters does, especially in international markets.

Social Community@PF

Based on user research and surveys sent to 10's of 1000's of current Planet Fitness members, we learned what members were looking for from their membership and how the new digital ecosystem could improve their engagement with Planet Fitness as a brand.

Many users noted they were interested in learning from or receiving encouragement from other members who had similar fitness goals to them. We recommended Planet Fitness start by creating a community section for their site users which aggregated content from multiple sources.

Recommended Community@PF Content:

1. Educational content (i.e. workouts and wellness tips) members claimed they wanted to learn about

2. Promotional ads featuring the latest membership flash sale

3. PF's heavily trafficked Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter content

By letting users explore tips, inspiration, hacks, and how-to's related to the gym (and unrelated to the gym), we tried to extend the judgement-free feeling users get when entering their local gym. I worked closely with our content strategists to develop 6 categories that users could choose from based on where along their fitness journey they identified with. The final categories were: 'Get Started', 'Keep it Going', 'Find Balance', 'Get Inspired', 'Eat Well', and 'Workout'. We received input from both our current members and SEO strategists and to decide on the final terms.

Component Library

Since the project had lots of moving parts and we worked collaboratively with the client over multiple weeks, I developed a component library to ensure our developers worked with the latest iterations of components and naming conventions.

Usability Testing

I led the usability testing for 10+ remote users and 5+ in-person tests in our on-site eye-tracking lab. We had two key use cases we wanted to test:

1. Finding a club that the user wants to join (from the homepage)

2. Joining that club and becoming a member online (from the club page)

Each round of testing produced overall positive and consistent results. We made slight design tweaks based on common themes we heard from multiple users. There were a few concepts we realized it was essential for a user to understand in order to create a successful join experience including:

1. Understanding which of the 1,000's of club locations they were joining before paying

2. Understanding which membership they signed up for (and if they have access to one or all clubs)

3. Understanding what fees the user would be charged for, during which month, and why (transparency is key)

Conversion Flow Redesign

Due to confidentially restraints I'm not able to disclose details of specific business challenges and our solutions. Contact me for a more in depth explanation of our thinking process and reasoning.