Criver Website Redesign
Brand: Charles River Labs
Mission: Enhancing quality of life by leveraging technology to accelerate the journey from drug discovery to FDA approval.
Role: Director of Product Design, stakeholder, & contributor
Problem:
How might we create a more informative experience for current and potential customers visiting our website?
Previous state:
- Content was heavily optimized for SEO but lacked a customer-focused tone, coming across as “marketing speaking to marketing.”
- The responsive experience needed significant improvement.
- Search functionality offered little value to users.
Action taken:
- Launched an internal Voice of Customer (VOC) initiative alongside another product designer, interviewing 32 employees and uncovering numerous critical insights.
- Conducted 25 VOC interviews with customers, revealing blunt feedback: many didn’t fully understand our offerings from the website alone.
- The website’s tone felt more like “marketing speaking to marketing” rather than driving genuine customer conversion.
Solution:
- Established a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) with over 125 customers, creating a strong feedback loop.
- Led a “Knowns and Unknowns” workshop with the internal team to align on insights and identify gaps.
- Redesigned the Information Architecture (IA) and revamped the primary navigation.
- Conducted user testing on prototypes to validate design choices.
- Created three homepage design versions to secure stakeholder alignment and buy-in. My design is below.
- Final design was selected, developed, and successfully launched in April 2024.
Results:
Even though my design was not chosen, our results for the latest design (live at criver.com) are as follows:
- Revamped Information Architecture: customers praised the new navigation, finding it much easier to locate products and services.
- Results from Jan – May 2023 vs. Jan – May 2024:
- 260% increase in pageviews.
- 185% increase in users.
- 132% increase in sessions.
- 26% decrease in bounce rate.
View the new site at: criver.com
