Although there are many user groups within the IELTS ecosystem, we encouraged the business to focus on the most important personas that IELTS Essentials is to serve. Upon consultation, we came down to 2 types of personas:

“The Nervous Tester”, who is at the beginning of their study/migration journey. Their perception of IELTS is based on what they’ve learned or heard from their peers. These testers have no experience on how hard or easy the test is and they often come with a study & exam mentality.

“The Desperate Tester” on the other hand has had a fair share of experience on English tests. They are typically pursuing a visa and tend to be in a survival mode. They will continue to sit the test to get the score.

Ultimately both have common goal, which is to be better equipped to prepare for the test and improve their band score, so that they can live or work permanently (in Australia, UK, Canada or the USA) for a better future.

IELTS was well aware of the increasing competition in the English langage test system market. Therefore the goal for this assignment was for the IELTS Essentials website to help make IELTS easy to access, transparent and supportive to the testers in an authentic way - that it convinces them to take, switch to or stick with IELTS as their preferred English test.

Strategically the business see an opportunity to increase user engagement on the IELTS Essentials website by implementing a new website information architecture, updating key page designs, providing new test taker support content and amplifying new brand messaging that supports the proposition.

Given the rapidly evolving market, the IELTS require a speedy solution that will allow them to test this hypothesis, without having to spend too much time in research, design and development. The business needed a way to be reassured and gain confidence on their case prior to investing further for the future.