The original site had a 68% form abandonment rate and 73% mobile traffic the layout couldn't handle. Four interviews surfaced a deeper pattern: users weren't bouncing because the form was hard — they were bouncing because the page hadn't earned the right to ask. The redesign moved trust signals up, made pricing concrete, and kept the form at seven fields because grave care actually needs that data. Season two booked roughly fifty clients.
A redesign grounded in what users actually said.
Sheffield Grave Care launched its first season on a website built on designer intuition. Bookings were minimal. The site looked finished but wasn't working. Rather than guessing what to change, I ran a six-month research engagement — four in-depth interviews, forty-five survey responses, qualitative coding, and quantitative behavioural analysis.
The research did not surface what we expected. The form was not the wound. The lack of context around it was. Pricing buried below the fold read as a trap. Veteran-owned status in the footer read as a hedge. Stock photography on a grief-care site read as worse than no photo.
This report documents the research questions, methodology, findings, design decisions, and measured outcomes — including the methodological honesty about how the first version came to exist.
Three questions framed the research.
Every interview, every survey, and every line of behavioural analysis was directed at answering one of three questions. Naming them upfront keeps the methodology honest — and keeps the findings traceable.
Was it the form itself, the page around it, or something earlier in the funnel?
And what was the actual context of that mobile usage?
And where were those signals positioned on the original site?
Mixed methods. Six months. One clear pattern.
The research combined qualitative and quantitative methods to triangulate findings. No single method would have surfaced the trust-deficit insight on its own — it took interview voices, survey scale, and behavioural data converging on the same conclusion.
A note on order. The original site was built before formal research. The honest version of this report is that I designed first, then researched what was broken. This reversed order turned out to be the most useful methodological choice of the project — it gave a sharp comparison between which design instincts were right, which were defensible-but-suboptimal, and which were dead wrong. The research's job was not to validate the site. Its job was to expose the gap between my assumptions and the user's reality.
A note on limitations · scope & generalizability. Four interviews and forty-five survey responses is a real sample, not a generalizable one. All participants were drawn from Lorain County, Ohio, through local distribution channels. Findings should be read as directional within this market, not as statistically projectable to grave-care services nationally.
Three quotes. The same finding underneath.
"I was overwhelmed trying to figure out the pricing. I just wanted to know if you could help clean my mother's headstone, but the website made it feel complicated."
P01 · Interview"I needed to know how much it would cost before I could even think about booking. When I couldn't find clear pricing, I just gave up and called someone else."
P02 · Interview"The form asked for so many details upfront. It felt like I was filling out a mortgage application."
P03 · InterviewAll four interviews surfaced the same complaint in different language: the page didn't earn the right to ask before it asked. The form was a symptom. The trust deficit was the diagnosis.
Four findings. Ranked by impact.
The intuitive read was: too many fields, too much friction. The interviews disproved this. Users said the form felt like too much because nothing on the page had built up to it. Without context, a 7-field form reads as a mortgage application. With context, it reads as professional intake.
Mobile usage was not the surprise. The context was. Participants described standing at a grave site with their phone open, fumbling with the form, dealing with sun glare and small touch targets. The original layout was built for a quiet desktop session. The actual usage was a windy graveside.
Survey responses ranked trust signals in order of influence. Veteran-owned was the runaway winner, ahead of insurance, LLC status, and Google reviews. Moving it to a hero subtitle — two words, no badge, no flag — was the highest-leverage single change in the redesign.
The audience spans tech-savvy adult children and elderly relatives. Standard accessibility passes were necessary but not sufficient — small touch targets, no phone-number alternative, low-contrast secondary text. Inclusive design here meant going beyond the checklist.
Three pillars. All emotional.
The findings consolidated into a three-pillar problem statement that guided every subsequent design decision. The pillars are deliberately framed in emotional terms because that is what the research surfaced — not feature gaps, but emotional friction.
Users are vulnerable. Every extra click is a tax on someone already carrying grief. Information density that helps in B2B SaaS hurts in grief care.
Pricing was buried. Real work was absent. Veteran-owned status was a footer detail instead of a thesis. By the time the form appeared, the page hadn't earned the right to ask anything.
73% of users were on phones — many standing at the cemetery itself. The actual context was outdoor, distracted, time-pressured, and often emotional.
Four interventions. Each tied to a finding.
| Solution | User Impact | Business Impact | Implementation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unified service experience | Single-page comparison instead of four scattered pages | 20% bounce-rate reduction | Responsive comparison layout, side-by-side care plans |
| Pricing in the open | Concrete dollar ranges on the page — no more guessing | 15% fewer pricing-question emails | Flat marker $50–70, upright $65–100, etc. |
| Trust-building visual design | Real before/after photography, veteran-owned moved to hero | 4.6/5 post-service satisfaction | Hover-to-reveal wipe, named work, not stock |
| Mobile-first responsive | Touch-friendly for all ages, phone-number alternative prominent | 12% booking increase at 60 days | 44px touch targets, stack-first grid |
Five moves. All research-grounded.
The single biggest insight from the interviews was that buried pricing reads as a trap. The redesign moved real numbers to the surface of the Services section. Trust came from the willingness to name a number.
The obvious move would have been cutting the form down. I didn't. Grave care requires cemetery name, section, plot number, and the deceased's name to actually do the work — there is no shorter version that yields a real inspection. So I made every other part of the site do the trust-building work the form couldn't. Form completion went up 20% on the same seven fields.
The Recent Restorations gallery uses actual work — named families, real headstones, hover-to-reveal wipe interactions. Stock photos were considered and rejected because a grieving user can tell the difference instantly.
On the original site, the veteran credential lived in the footer next to copyright. The survey ranked it as the single most-influential trust signal in the entire research set. The redesign moved it directly under the hero headline — two words, no badge, no flag, no graphic.
Sage palette, large type, generous spacing, sentences that finish before the next idea starts. The page is slower than a SaaS marketing site by design. Calm beats efficient when users are grieving. The pacing isn't decoration — it's the whole product.
Year one, no bookings to speak of. Year two, fifty.
What this project taught me about UX research.
Building first and researching second gave a sharp comparison: which design instincts were right, which were defensible-but-suboptimal, and which were dead wrong. The trust-deficit insight was the dead-wrong one.
The default instinct in UX is to cut fields. Sometimes the right move is to leave the form alone and rebuild the page around it. A 7-field form on a page that has earned trust completes more often than a 4-field form on a page that hasn't.
WCAG passes were necessary but not sufficient. The actual gains came from 44px touch targets, a prominent phone-number alternative, larger body text, and slower pacing — design moves an audit would not flag but a 72-year-old user would feel immediately.
SaaS UX is built on speed. Grief UX is built on calm. Generous spacing instead of dense. Soft confirmations instead of micro-celebrations. Sentences instead of headlines. The pace is the product.
What I'd test next. In priority order.
Add progressive disclosure to the inspection form — group the 7 fields into a 3-step micro-flow with a visible progress indicator.
PlanA/B test family testimonial quotes alongside the before/after gallery to amplify the trust signal that's already working.
PlanBuild an SMS reminder system for annual care plan customers — research suggested high willingness, no current implementation.
PlanConduct a second wave of interviews with completed-service customers to surface the emotional arc of the full experience.
PlanKeep the form at seven fields. Continue trust-building investment in the page around it.
KeptResearch instruments and materials.
The interview guide, survey instrument, and coding scheme are included in this archive as separate PDFs. Raw transcripts and individual survey responses are not published, to protect participant privacy.
Semi-structured question set used across all four interviews — opening rapport, current pain points, pricing perception, mobile context, and trust signals.
12-question mixed-format survey distributed via local channels. Likert scales for satisfaction, ranking questions for trust signals, open-text fields for grievances.
Thematic codes applied to interview transcripts — primary themes (trust deficit, mobile context, emotional load) and sub-codes.
Documents are anonymized — no participant identifiers, no client-confidential pricing details, no raw response data.