Rebranding Website for Audience Engagement at
King's Court
Company
King's Court
(Boston Start-up)
Role
Lead UX/UI Designer
Team
1 UXD
2 Developers
Timeline
12 Months
Figma · Brand Identity Design · Team Management · Multi-channel Design
OBJECTIVE
King's Court Comedy needed a website that matched its growth. My team and I redesigned it into a scalable, visually cohesive experience built to resonate with younger, underground comedy audiences.
REBRAND APPROACH
I started this rebrand approach with a full look at what the current website found success in and failure. I used competitive analysis, mood boards, stakeholder meetings, and user testing to remake the website successfully.
10+
Stakeholder meetings
3
User testing Sessions
5+
Website Iterations
15.5K
Website revenues tracked
Stakeholder Meetings
5 Team Stakeholders & UXD Team
Across 10 meetings, I tested 4 design directions, using their feedback each round to refine toward one direction that fit both the brand goals and users.
User Testing Sessions
UXD Team Field Testing 60+ Participants
We went to audience events and tested out our platform from 60+ audience members, we also conducted informal interviews to gain more insight.
Website Analytics Reviews
UXD Team
Analyzed over 15.5k website revenues, analyzing what sources, browsers, devices, visit trends, and overall traffic the website encountered to better inform design decisions.
DESIGN IMPLICATIONS
Research revealed 6 core user needs. The website needed to serve as a single entry point, minimize friction, while appealling to the audience visually
Prospective Member
quickly understand what King's Court is and become a member with minimal friction.
Current Member
see what experiences/events are happening and know how to attend.
Performer / Event Producer
find the booking path and submit an inquiry to perform, produce an event, or rent the space
Brand / Sponsor
gauge audience size and fit, then submit a sponsorship inquiry
Merch shopper
browse and buy without needing to touch any of the above
Casual Visitor
confirm it's 21+/members-only, then find social or contact info if not ready to join
IDEATION AND REBRAND DEVELOPMENT
We took a look at the current platform and picked apart what worked and what did not. This stage helped set up new hierarchies, visual needs, and, workflows. Below are just a few of the many key notes that were made.
KEY DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
Throughout the design development process we focused on many areas of improvement, notably the workflow of ticketing and membership. Through stakeholder meetings, user testing and visual upgrading, we were able to make key decisions for the design.
Landing page Concept Workflow
Key Stakeholder Notes
Membership was important, they had issues with people buying tickets and then needing to sign
up for membership at the door which slowed down check ins
As a start-up, they wanted people to know who they are as a company. "About us" needed to be prioritized
User Testing
We created mid fidelity mockups and ran user observations in two rounds, first with a group of employees, then with a test group at check-in
Both rounds pointed to the same behavior:
Users never scrolled the homepage to check whether events were even listed there, they went straight to the Events tab.
For membership, though, the pattern was mixed, at the door, signing up on the spot was the top priority for anyone who hadn't registered in advance, and this group split roughly evenly between scrolling the homepage and clicking straight into the Membership tab.
Applying the Research
Through our research, we finalized the most successful layout that aligned with user and business goals.
We decided to remove events from the landing page entirely and keep it in the events tab. This way the workflow prompts users to sign in for the membership before having any other action items. It also allowed less congestion within the landing page so the about us section could breathe.
VALIDATION AND TESTING
Employee Walkthroughs
The final version was walked through with a group of employees, who completed the same tasks a guest would, finding out what events were coming up, and signing up for a membership.
User Testing
This final verison was then observed with a test group at check-in, under closer-to-real conditions, to see whether the patterns from the employee round held true with actual guests arriving at the door.
Heuristic Evaluation
3 Team Stakeholders
Teams independently evaluated the prototype against 7 usability heuristics to identify violations before user testing.
Usability Testing with CEO
CEO of KC & UX Team Lead (me)
Conducted a one on one usability test with the CEO of the company to comple task-based scenarios using think-aloud protocol to validate navigation, terminology, and overall effectiveness.
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99%
Average task completion rate
1.55
Average clicks to complete tasks
6
Critical design issues solved
100%
Prefer this layout
FORM DESIGN CHANGE
One thing we kept hearing was that the forms leaned too clean and simple, it didn't match the blocky thicker visuals of the rest of the website. An complete overlook by my team and I, we used a generic form field instead of thinking about how cohesive it actually fit. A mistake I learned from.
Below is our updated form fields!
OUTCOMES AFTER 1 YR
2K-19K
visit increase per month
35%
Audience increase
42yrs
average audience age
(prev 49yrs)
37%
Ticket sale increase
FINAL VIDEO WALKTHROUGH
Below is the final walkthrough of the website, many months of visual design choices such as logos, typography, merchandising, etc were made. Further deep dives on those processes can be requested by contacting me.
LESSONS LEARNED
A polished template isn't the same as a working design
The team didn't prioritize form field layout early in the process, assuming a clean, pre-set styling pattern would be good enough, but that gap came back to bite us in testing, when users stumbled on low-contrast labels that a more deliberate pass would have caught from the start.
Cutting a feature can be the redesign
The biggest UX win of the project wasn't adding anything, it was removing the events section from the homepage entirely, which did more for task completion than any visual redesign choice.
Revisiting stakeholder priorities after each testing round
Like the push to get guests signed up for membership before anything else, kept the team's design decisions aligned instead of drifting toward changes that looked good but missed the business goal.