Homepage redesign
Outcome
Restructuring a homepage around the questions prospective students actually ask
Overview
Katala is an on-demand GCSE maths tutoring service. As a new business, its homepage had a simple job: turn a first-time visitor into a sign-up.
The problem wasn't a lack of content. It was that the page wasn't answering the questions a prospective student needed to make that decision.
I found that the homepage was structured around what Katala offered, rather than what a visitor needed to understand before getting started.
The redesign focused on four questions:
What is Katala? → How will it help me? → What does it cost? → How do I start?
Finding where the homepage broke down
Decision: Simplify the funnel
Working from two personas created by the researcher, I mapped how each user would move through the homepage to answer those four questions.
The gaps became clear:
Important information was buried beneath a high volume of content.
Messaging was split between students and parents without a clear hierarchy.
Sign-up CTAs were vague about what would happen next.
The primary CTA opened a modal asking whether the visitor was a new or existing user, creating friction at the moment they were trying to get started.
I then audited the existing page and benchmarked other tutoring services.
The competitive review reinforced the finding. Stronger examples weren't simply listing their services. They were structuring the experience around how the service solved the visitor's problem, with clearer hierarchy and more concise messaging.
The issue wasn't that Katala needed more content.
It needed a clearer answer to the visitor's questions.
Rather than redesigning individual sections in isolation, I proposed restructuring the homepage as a simple decision-making funnel:
What Katala is
How it benefits the user
How to get started
Testimonials, tutor profiles and additional pricing detail remained important, but became supporting content rather than competing with the primary message.
I first mapped the proposed structure as content blocks, separating must-have information from nice-to-have content. This gave the team a clear minimum viable structure before I moved into wireframing.
Removing friction from the CTA
The existing sign-up language also created uncertainty about what would happen next.
I recommended replacing the vague CTA with a direct:
Start Free Trial
I also identified a separate issue with the combined Log in / Sign up button. From the user's perspective, these were two different actions with different intentions, so I recommended separating them into two clear entry points.
The split login was technically more involved because it touched the existing authentication flow. It therefore remained a recommendation rather than something I could resolve within the two-week scope.
That distinction was important: the user journey identified the problem, but the implementation constraint determined what could realistically change
Designing and aligning the solution
I explored the proposed structure through low-fidelity wireframes before moving into mid-fidelity designs in Figma, including the mobile experience.
Rather than choosing the structure alone, I brought the options to the team for a dot-voting session. We aligned on one structure to build as the minimum viable version, with the intention of testing and expanding it later.
I then handed the designs to the developer through a recorded walkthrough, explaining the reasoning behind the key decisions so the team had a reference during implementation.
Outcome
After the redesigned homepage went live, enquiries and sign-ups increased by 8 students per week.
This was a meaningful shift, but the result doesn't isolate which individual decisions caused the improvement. The new page replaced a homepage with clear clarity and conversion issues, so the increase could reflect the overall improvement rather than any single CTA, content order or interaction change.
The login split also didn't make it into this version because of the technical work required to change the authentication flow.
That became a useful example of designing within real product constraints: identifying a genuine user problem doesn't automatically mean it can be solved in the current release.
Reflection
The biggest lesson from Katala was that homepage redesign is less about visual refresh and more about editorial hierarchy and decision-making.
The most valuable design work wasn't a particular component or interaction. It was identifying the four questions a first-time visitor needed answered and restructuring the experience around them.
If I had more time, I'd test the MVP structure with real users before investing further in the secondary sections. That would help validate not just whether the page was clearer, but whether the order and amount of information were actually helping visitors make the decision to start.
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