The Ingomar Club
Transforming digital expectations through strategic product.
Legacy Agency Design Project -> from 2017
Hidden within the North Coast lies one of the many wonders of the Victorian Era: The Carson Mansion. The Ingomar Club is a private community of individuals dedicated to the preservation of the most photographed house in America. Envisioned in 2004, their original website was struggling to meet modern expectations of visitors, requirements of the Club members, and the needs of the Club staff.
After a chance meeting between myself and the Club’s leadership, we began conversations to overhaul their existing website. After several months of honest conversations, competitive analysis, and getting to know the inner workings of the Club, I was able to provide a proposal to target their specific pain points in a three-month sprint.
The Club tasked me to lead a team at EvenVision to overhaul their website and establish a new digital platform that would not only delight their members but provide them with a valuable experience and give the Club a new and easy-to-use method for serving their esteemed clients.
The Back Story
Building a delightful platform with valuable customer experiences. Crafting meaningful products to drive organizational goals and exceed customer expectations.
Their 14 Year Old Website Problem
As the most common method people used to explore the Carson Mansion and the Club, their website no longer provided an appropriate representation of their commitment to excellence and a world class club membership. Furthermore, because of the age the website members had long given up making use of their special web access as the Club staff struggled to even maintain the aging system.
The Trident Design Solution
Be Bold. Be Beautiful.
The Non-Member Experience
Remove the design of the website from the center of attention allowing the Carson Mansion to speak for itself.
Provide a more refined, accessible user-friendly website by implementing responsive web design best practices.
Construct clear navigational pathways that encourage exploration through streamlined dialogue.
Carefully curate visual content to provide immediate and lasting impressions of quality.
Be Delightful. Be Simple.
The Member Experience
Provide an easily accessible unified mobile-friendly secure members-only experience.
Construct a member dashboard focused on Member’s Events - the lifeblood of the Club.
Provide personalized points of engagement through new features that encouraged specific community behaviors bringing the Club members closer together.
Be Responsive. Be Polished.
The Staff Experience
Robust, simple & easy to use Content Management System for the staff to quickly update and maintain the site's various types of content through tiered access.
Automated content distribution & archiving on site, allowing for single content entry.
Bulk editing tools for quickly manipulating core content across all tiered access accounts.
Quick digest overviews of key member interactions on site.
Core Experiences
Member’s Dashboard
Designed around the lifeblood of the organization - events, the member’s dashboard is the go-to place for information regarding the club and upcoming events.
Staff Backend- V0
The new design provided quick overview tools for the staff of the Ingomar Club to quickly preview, edit and make changes to member reservations and key activities on the site. For the initial roll-out, we focused on keeping it simple and functional with a more advanced system planned for the future.
The Results
Site Traffic.
Prior to launching the new platform, the Ingomar Club lacked appropriate information regarding site traffic. One core principle of my time at EvenVision was ensuring that our system logged data which we would analyze and make strategic improvements from. The Club was thrilled to hear that within 5 months of launch over 14,000 distinct users had traveled through their non-member website to explore the Carson Mansion.
Member Usage.
The new website was met with enthusiasm from the members of the organization who had been left wanting for so long. Usage of the new site jumped immediately from their previous system and retained a 600% increase in site usage. More importantly within 3 months of a launch over 35% of event reservations were now handled directly through the website which left staff with more time to focus on their member’s needs.
Club Revenue.
A pleasant but not altogether unexpected result of the new website and member usage was the development of unique revenue streams that did exist prior to the new system. The non-member experience drove a massive increase in external event inquiries, and new-member inquiries, as well as driving up additional in-person traffic from partner clubs, and opened the door to providing unique up-sell opportunities for the organization to their own members. What was originally perceived to be a large investment by the Club was paid off in full within 3 months of launch.
Design is more than pixels.
It’s a conversation.
Personal Reflection
This was a project of personal passion. I invested over 80 hours in conversations spread over nearly a year to uncover the club’s pain-points and figure out the right design solution for such a unique organization prior to even landing them as a client. This did not go unnoticed.
Conversations matter. Shaking hands count.
The Ingomar Club Website project was a huge success for the organization and for my company EvenVision. After landing and successfully completing their project they referred 3 high-value clients to EvenVision and more specifically to my voicemail box. Additionally, what started as a 1-time project turned into a healthy monthly retainer for me to lead our team in making strategic product improvements to accelerate the club’s initiatives.
The only reason for the success of this project was that I invested the time to listen first.
Design is a conversation.