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Case Study: Lady Yotas, LLC

About:

Lady Yotas is a social group for female identifying people/women who own a Toyota and/or a Lexus (Lexus is owned by Toyota). Founded in 2022, it has since become an LLC and has increased business goals. I became involved as a member in the summer of 2023. At that time, admin managed all membership and group activities on a Facebook group. Initially, they lacked a functional website, app, and eComm presence.  I knew I could help improve their web presence and achieve other business goals.

My Roles:

The team refers to me as the “head of IT”, but my duties include much more than IT.

  • Website design (UX and UI)

  • Information Architecture (IA) planning

  • Website maintenance

  • Site security measures

  • Business planning and ideation

  • Roadmap development

  • Prioritization matrix maintenance

Business Issues:

I created a new version of the website and presented a basic revision to the founder, Nia, in the fall of 2023. She was impressed and invited me to work with her and co-founder, Kymberlee. Issues that they faced included:

  • Grow the business

  • Content sharing and not being stale.

  • Provide a space for female identifying people to ask questions without negative feedback from traditional groups

    • Ex: Male dominated forums or in-person groups

    • Be a supportive place for female identifying people

  • Promote other female identifying people

  • Make things easier for members!

  • Automate Processes

    • Having to manage sales 1 item at a time, and required a person to facilitate the sale;

  • Track sales

  • Increase sales

  • Grow the group

  • Functional website

    • Membership was only available on Facebook. Concerned that some members did not want to be on/weren’t on Facebook due to safety concerns, and that someday the Groups function could go away.

    • Wanted to create a blog.

    • Improved member engagement

Discovery:

To learn about Lady Yotas, I spoke with the founders, group members, explored the current Facebook group, and documented how various goals were completed. This includes how members signed-up to participate and pay for events. This specific goal included the following tasks:

  • Find the event by looking for the post in the Facebook group, search by keyword, ask an admin member.

  • Message admin member to pay any fees via Venmo.

  • Click “Going” for the event. Any location information (hidden from the general public in order to protect the attendees) would be sent out via email.

Ideation:

I documented many flows for users to achieve a goal. I documented user pain points and potential ways to mitigate these pain points and achieve goals. Findings indicate that there is a lot of “knowledge in the head” and shared group knowledge that may be more difficult to discover or find as a new user. The updated website addresses the following issues:

  • Findability (the ability to find desired information)

  • Discoverability (the ability to discover how the website is set-up and it’s functions)

  • Shallow Information Architecture

  • Product categories

  • Allow users to pay using a number of various methods, and to do so when they wanted

  • Protecting the business regarding liability, federal and local regulation, and addressing legalities of members outside of the USA.

Implementation:

Once I better understood the business better, I made the following suggestions group under the above listed Business Issues. These have all been implemented:

 

Grow the business:

  • Create a business plan

  • Created a Miro board that housed ideas, questions, prioritization matrix, and the roadmap.

  • Migrated the website domain from GoDaddy to Wix. This included e-mail account management, set-up, and permissions.

  • Create and add a Privacy Policy

  • Suggested to only store necessary information, the minimal amount required to get the work done.

  • Speaking with a lawyer regarding liability

 

Content sharing and not being stale:

  • Social media links were added to the footer.

  • Created shallow IA for images shared. This includes events (people and places), and rigs (focus is on the vehicle). Documented how often to update the images on the website.​​

 

Provide a space for female identifying people to ask questions without negative feedback from traditional groups:

  • Members only space:

    • Event details

    • Membership map

  • Added the rules of membership to the website, accessible at About >> Become A Member >> FAQs >> Rules

  • Added membership eligibility, accessible at About >> Become A Member >> FAQs >> Eligibility

  • Added the group questionnaire that is REQUIRED to become a member.

 

Promote other female identifying people:

  • Partners will have their own profile and external links that open in a new page.

​

Make things easier for members!

  • Mobile app design and launch

    • Mobile members will not need to use the Wix app, Spaces.

    • The basic information architecture of the site was revised to include: About, Gallery, Shop, and the ability for approved members to Log In.

 

Automate processes:

  • Automated the membership approval process:

    • Potential members must review the rules, answer the questions (answers must meet membership eligibility requirements. System will approve applicants that meet this criterion. Administrative staff will have the opportunity to review individual applications as desired.

 

Track sales:

  • Migrate their website domain from GoDaddy to Wix. This included e-mail account management, set-up, and permissions. Wix allowed for easier tracking of physical inventory, displaying of various color options, tracking of sales data, and being able to generate financial reports.

 

Increase sales:

  • High quality product images

  • Provide flat information architecture for products.

  • Include filter option

 

Grow the group:

  • Blog posts contain keywords to help with SEO, increasing findability and discoverability.

  • Have events on members only calendar

    • Can register

    • Can pay

    • Track capping limits for events

Pending Opportunities:

And their justifications

  • Podcast: Would offer an opportunity to discuss common issues in an immediately interactive and entertaining setting. Provide an emotional connection between the Lady Yota admin, guests, and members.

  • Calculate monthly expenses to better understand financial standing. Would provide a way to know how much in sales needs to be generated monthly in order to break even. This would establish a baseline. It can help plan how much to put into advertising, promotions, and staffing efforts.

Insights:

  • Site visitors average 2.1 page views per visit. This is higher than average for similar sites.

  • Checkout rate is 42%. This is higher than average for similar sites.

  • The product pages garner the most views.

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