Everything you need to know about the new website navigation.

You’ll notice some changes to our website’s navigation today, all of which were implemented to make managing your tutoring business easier and more efficient—so you can spend less time looking for things, and more time tutoring.

We sat down with our Product Design Lead, John Horstman, to share the inside scoop on what’s changed, and why. Let’s dig in…

What sparked the decision to update the navigation?

Well, there are really three parts to this answer.

First, we learned over time that our navigation didn’t reflect the way tutors were thinking about our website.

Some of the most common functions that tutors were using—like checking their dashboard or responding to new messages—were buried under headings that weren’t obvious or very helpful. This forced tutors to search for the things they needed in order to manage their business, which wasn’t ideal.

We also had things that were front and center in the navigation that weren’t being utilized or visited much, so we agreed it was time for an overhaul.

Sorting printouts of our website.

Secondly, we added a number of new features over time but didn’t update the navigation accordingly.

In the last couple of years, we’ve rebuilt our messaging platform, allowed tutors to set their availability, released mobile apps, revamped our online learning tool… and all of these additions ended up getting wedged into our old nav, which resulted in things not being grouped together very logically.

We also didn’t have a central place to communicate these updates to tutors, which felt like a miss.

Thirdly, the old nav took up a lot of space.

Screens are only so big, and the height of the nav was causing people to run out of space in important places, like messaging—which is a vital part of running your tutoring business.

By shrinking that space down, we made messaging more efficient, and made room for the important content on each page of the site.

What did the design process entail?

We approached the problem in two stages—first with an internal group that included employees from across the organization, and then we met with a group of local tutors.

Internally, we wanted to better understand which pages tutors were using to manage their business, so we started by looking at the pages they were visiting most, and made sure we were prioritizing them appropriately.

Next, we did a card sort exercise, which is a popular technique designers use when revamping a navigation. We printed out the names of each of the pages on site and had everyone group them together in a way that made sense to them.

Once that exercise was completed with employees, we hosted a participatory design session with tutors.

We met with a group of local tutors, making sure to include people with a variety of experience, ranging from those who have only been using Wyzant for a month or two, to top ranking tutors who have been around for years. We wanted to ensure that this group used a variety of our tools, for in-person and online lessons, and that they also used the mobile app.

This session included three activities.

1. Card sort. Same as the exercise we did internally, we asked tutors to group the pages of our website in a way that made sense to them. People ended up with a similar number of groups (5-6)—fewer than we were currently using on the site—which suggested that we could group these pages in a way that made sense to tutors without having to overcomplicate things.

2. Click test exercise. We presented the participants with our idea of how we thought the navigation should be organized, and asked them to look for the common functions they use day-to-day, like submitting a lesson, where to find new students to work with, how to begin an online lesson and how to update their profile. We did this to confirm that tutors would have an easy time performing these tasks with the proposed navigation we had in mind.

3. Interviews. This was an open-table discussion about everything we covered—and anything else on the tutors’ minds. This insightful piece of the project helped us land on a navigation that we felt would make more sense to everyone, and be easier to use.

So, what exactly changed?

We cleaned up and reorganized the navigation, but you’ll notice the content on almost every page is the same as it was before. Now, it’s much easier to…

• Schedule a lesson. You can schedule straight from the nav, which you couldn’t do before.
• Join an online lesson. There’s no question as to where or how you can access your online lessons.
• Get to your dashboard and messages. We prioritized these into the new nav as they’re some of the most frequently used pages, vital to staying on top of your business.
• Manage your business from one place. All of your day-to-day operations will live under My Business—managing lessons, finding jobs and reviewing payments.
• Keep up with what’s new. Before, you could only access our “What’s New” updates from messages. But now, you can learn about the latest improvements and fixes anywhere you happen to be on the site.
• Manage your profile. There used to be various places to change your profile settings, spread across multiple navigation headers. Now, anything you want to do with your profile is consolidated in one convenient place. Get the most out of Wyzant. We added a new section called “Toolkit” that has everything you need to be successful on the Wyzant platform.

What changes will tutors notice the most?

I think there are two things that will feel pretty different at first, but were changed specifically to streamline a tutor’s experience on our site.

The first is the tutor profile. As I mentioned earlier, everything associated with a tutor’s profile is now in one place, as opposed to being spread across various parts of the site. This can be found by navigating to your avatar menu, which lives in the top right corner of the screen, and selecting “Profile.”

The second is how tutors apply to jobs. This used to have its own heading in the navigation, but now it’s more logically grouped under “My Business.”

Anything else tutors should know about the new navigation? Everyone on the team agreed this update was long overdue, so we hope you find it lives up to its potential.

On that final note, we invite you to visit the site and explore the new navigation.

Product Design Lead, John Horstman