The Challenge

When I joined Raisely, a for-purpose platform powering fundraisers, they had just finished a rebrand complete with a new website but things weren't quite right. Our CEO, Tom Maitland, was concerned with the lackluster conversion rates on our website—our primary funnel for demo sign-ups. The existing site hoped to inspire the fundraising audience to use Raisely as an aspirational tool to “bring your fundraising ideas to life,” but the data told a different story: users weren’t biting. Something wasn’t clicking—either the brand messaging or the website itself was missing the mark. Tom handed me the reins to figure it out, and I saw a chance to not just tweak things but to test a hunch: could a product-led brand refresh, paired with a redesigned user experience, turn things around?

My Approach

I love the interplay between functional design and aesthetic polish, and this project was a great place to practice this. My process unfolded in two key stages: Testing Brand Ideas and Learning from the Findings. I leaned on my design toolkit—Figma for wireframes and prototypes, Raisely's CLI and HTML/CSS/JavaScript for development, and React for dynamic components—while weaving in user testing and data analytics to keep things grounded.

I love the interplay between functional design and aesthetic polish, and this project was a great place to practice this. My process unfolded in two key stages: Testing Brand Ideas and Learning from the Findings. I leaned on my design toolkit—Figma for wireframes and prototypes, Raisely's CLI and HTML/CSS/JavaScript for development, and React for dynamic components—while weaving in user testing and data analytics to keep things grounded.

Stage 1: Testing Brand Ideas

I kicked things off by designing and building a new homepage, moving towards a product-led narrative that highlighted Raisely’s product and importantly, what made our product different: its high performance, flexibility, and data-informed design decisions. Speed was key, so I launched this as an A/B test against the old site using a split URL tool, letting real users vote with their clicks. Under the mentorship of our data engineer, Martin Burgess, I dove into sequence analytics with Motif to track how users moved through the site—what they clicked, where they lingered, where they dropped off. The homepage results were promising: the new product-led design drove a 200%+ increase in demo conversions, our north star metric. Excited by the results, I rolled this design out to other pages, iterating as I went—tweaking headlines, testing CTAs, and refining layouts based on user behavior. I coded interactive blocks to break down our pricing model and dynamic components that adapted to different regions, ensuring the site felt both usable and delightful. We saw similar increases in demo conversions across all pages.

Key Finds That Shaped the Design:

Stage 2: Learning from the Findings

What started as a homepage refresh became a marketing learning. I worked with the marketing team to distill the design and copy insights into a full brand refresh. We landed on a new messaging cornerstone: “Advanced Fundraising Made Humanly Possible”—a blend of Raisely’s tech prowess and human touch. I took the lead on designing and building a brand guidelines website, codifying the look and feel that now drives our website, ads, and internal collateral. The website research didn’t just boost conversions; it rewired our product narrative and team mindset, aligning the greater company around what our users cared about. Check it out.