MGM Resorts 

Homepage Redesign

Overlooked Content and Missed Growth Opportunities 

How might we inspire customers to engage and explore MGM Resorts Intl. compelling portfolio of brands, and increase traffic to bookings?

Existing Desktop Web Homepage Design

Introduction

MGM Resorts Intl. is an iconic, global brand, and in 2022 the a top-of-funnel landing page experience for web didn’t serve the needs of customers or the business. 

• The web homepage doesn’t provide potential customers with key information that can help them make decisions

• It includes irrelevant and stale information they ignore

• It neglects the evolving habits of how and where customers make decisions
  

• The visual design doesn’t match the powerful brand marketing the company invests in to attract new customers

• Customers with visual disabilities have a limited experience due to a missing accessible structure, and color palette

Visitors Spend Little Time Exploring

We executed a variety of qualitative and quantitative research throughout the project. We mapped feedback through moderated interviews, analyzed CTRs, reviewed heatmaps, and audited our existing evergreen content. We performed a competitive analysis primarily to compare our content strategy.

Existing Homepage Design - Mixed Method Research; UserZoom feedback mapping, CTR analysis, Heatmapping

Round 1 - Unmoderated click-testing across three DWeb & MWeb wireframes via UserZoom & dscout, n=30 (MGM Rewards members)

Beyond Booking, Teach Customers to Linger Longer

Visitors stumbled during the booking process due to two reasons: 1. The booking module did not utilize intelligent pre-filled form fields, and 2. The required fields were overly complicated. We solved for this by using conversion data to redesign the form minimizing effort to progress into the booking funnel.

Analytics revealed high bounce rates and low engagement across both transient guests and logged-in customers. Below-the-fold content was outdated and unfocused - primarily corporate information. Our solution: personalize content for users while showcasing our distinctive property portfolio to encourage further exploration.

Protect the Primary Page Task: Booking

As we progressed through the project, I suggested unmoderated click-testing across three Desktop and Mobile Web wireframes via UserZoom & dscout which helped us zero in on the concept with the highest task success. Of note, during our second round of unmoderated testing at mid-fidelity our hypothesis was disproven about which concept would have the highest booking module task success. We course-corrected with another concept which combined elements of two previous concepts to accomplish goals for the customer and our business partners. 

Round 2 - Unmoderated click-testing across three MWeb mid-fi concepts via UserZoom, n=100

Test and Validate Our Protected Revenue Drivers

Our process for the project allowed time in our roadmap for discovery research, and iterative design progressing from wireframes through full-fidelity. All the while, we knew our work redesigning what we called the “room booking module” would be monitored closely and guarded by our business partners. This module was the primary action customers would take on this screen, and we had to minimize risk in upsetting conversion rates. In fact, success of the project required growth in CVR.

• As the project progressed we also made the difficult decision to reduce our plans for some of the timely content we partnered with our content team to produce. There was a broader effort to modernize the CMS for web content, which meant they had less capacity and we would change some of our ambitious plans. 

New Content Strategy Confirmed

We confirmed through testing the importance of our new content strategy. And while we shelved one proposed content module, we included all-new highly-visual content modules leveraging a headless CMS to allow for frequent fresh new content.

Improved Room Booking Flow, Fresh Personalized Content, Accessible for All

We designed a consolidated room booking module, separated from the hero marketing banner with intelligent defaults validated during usability testing. 

We created an all-new “Meet Out Resorts” content module with key content and visuals to encourage deeper exploration of the MGM property portfolio. 

We leveraged our research-informed content strategy to improve engagement throughout the page by adding key visual content modules to help visitors “Find Something Unforgettable” and “Start Your Next Escape.” 

And finally, we significantly improved the visual design with accessibility at it’s core, and optimized for mobile web.

Desktop Web Homepage Redesign

Impact

Strong Core KPI Growth, and a Webby Award Nomination 

We entered this project into competition for a Webby Award, and were nominated for Best Responsive/Adaptive Design for Mobile (Mobile Features) in 2023.

Uncovering and prioritizing the most impactful content was an important aspect of success in this project, as was maintaining or improving conversion rates to booking. I had to make difficult decisions about the trade-offs in our approach to accomplish these goals. We might not have been as successful with launch had it not been for our ability to research the problems during discovery, and test our assumptions as the design evolved. I’m grateful for Product and Engineering partners that made space for us to do this work.

Next Steps

The foundational work my team accomplished during this project set the stage for a broader redesign of the web experience including category pages, and product detail pages - the key top-of-funnel experience customers used to make booking decisions.

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