Ibotta - Back-to-School
Article Design
In this case study, I detail the design of a "Back to School" article and content strategy aimed at helping brands capitalize on a key buying season. By optimizing the article's user experience and information hierarchy, I directly contributed to business goals, leading to a significant increase in impressions, click-through rates, and overall reader engagement.
Client
Ibotta Performance Network
Services
Prototyping UI & UX Design Wireframing
Industries
Grocery
Date
May 2025
The Challenge
The primary challenge was to capture and retain the attention of a time-crunched business professional. Our core problem was low user engagement, specifically that our target audience was not reading the entire article. Our goal was to design a solution that would encourage users to not only scan the content for key takeaways but also to stay on the page and engage with the full article. Our design goals were to improve the article's scan-ability by establishing a clear text hierarchy. We aimed to increase user engagement and improve click-through rates to other, related articles. By making the content digestible and easy to navigate, we sought to provide immediate value and encourage deeper exploration.
The Process
To better understand our audience and their needs, I created a user persona based on my assumptions and market analysis. This persona, Robert, the Time-Crunched Marketer, served as our single point of truth throughout the design process. His need for efficiency and his frustration with long, un-scannable content directly informed every design decision.
My process began with a low-fidelity wireframe to explore and define the information hierarchy. This allowed me to strategically place key elements like a table of contents and call-out quotes that would allow a user to quickly get the gist of the article. During this phase, I collaborated closely with the content team. We discovered that the original content lacked a clear structure, which would have made headings confusing and navigation difficult. I worked with the team to reorganize the content into logical sections, using clear subheadings like "Goals" to break up the flow and improve readability. This collaboration was crucial to ensuring the article's design and content were aligned to achieve our user engagement goals.
increase on time spent on page
campaign impressions
click-rate of all 2025 campaigns
Conclusion
While the project was successful based on initial metrics, I would have loved to conduct a usability test using a heat map to validate my initial assumptions. This qualitative data would have provided valuable insights into where users were looking on the page, where they dropped off, and their overall flow through the article. This feedback would have been instrumental in further optimizing the design and proving the direct impact of our strategic choices.