✦ ROOTLINE
Designing trust for non-technical clients
Rootline needed more than a visual refresh. Small business owners were hesitating to reach out — not because the service was wrong, but because the website introduced doubt exactly when it should have built confidence.
team
Nouran Mansour, Luisa Malundo, Karen Villard
duration
2 Weeks
role
UX / UI / Research / Wireframing / Testing
industry
E-Commerce
tools
Figma, Miro, FigJam
OVERVIEW
Rootline is an IT solutions provider working with small and medium business owners.The challenge was not lack of services — it was lack of clarity.Many potential clients visiting the website were not technical, They needed reassurance, proof, and a clear path before they felt confident enough to reach out.
The goal of the redesign was to create a responsive website that builds trust early, explains services simply, and makes contacting the company feel safe.
Trust drops before contact.
RÚBEN'S GOAL
"I want to be clarified as possible, simple as possible, and concrete. Guide business owners — don't overwhelm them."
MISSING FEATURES
No testimonials. No pricing info. No legal pages. No clear niche. Critical trust signals absent across the board.
MARKET GAP
Competitors are either cold & technical or safe but generic. Rootline can own the space between: reliable, local, approachable.
USER INTERVIEWS
Research with business owners showed that confidence often decreased while browsing the website.
Users struggled to understand
• what Rootline actually offers
• who the services are for
• why they should trust the company
This made the problem clear: the website didn’t lack information — it lacked structure and trust signals.
From insights to constraints.
User interviews and competitor analysis showed three recurring issues:
• unclear value proposition
• high contact friction
• missing credibility signals
Instead of adding more content, I focused on reducing cognitive load and defined a simple decision flow: understand → validate → trust → contact. This flow became the backbone of the redesign.
Less pages. More confidence.
To avoid feature overload, I defined a focused MVP.
Must support:
01 — Clear value proposition above the fold Users couldn't articulate what Rootline did in 10 seconds. I rewrote the hero headline to answer "who is this for" before "what do we do."
02 — Step-by-step process over pricing Testing showed process transparency reduced hesitation more than cost transparency. I restructured the services page around a 4-step journey.
03 — Friction-free contact everywhere Contact was buried on the original site. I embedded a sticky CTA in the nav and added contextual contact prompts at every decision point.
Anything that didn’t help users decide faster was removed.This helped keep the experience simple, especially for non-technical clients.
Too many buttons, not enough clarity.
Low-fidelity testing showed that users hesitated instead of moving forward.
Issues found:
• too many calls to action
• unclear wording
• weak hierarchy
To fix this, I reduced the number of actions per screen and rewrote labels to make the next step obvious. After iteration, users moved through the flow with less hesitation.
Clarity comes from hierarchy.
Mid-fidelity testing revealed that the layout still felt heavy.Users scanned but didn’t fully understand the content.
I improved the structure by:
• separating sections more clearly
• increasing visual hierarchy
• simplifying navigation labels
These changes made the pages easier to read and reduced decision friction.
Before → After
Before (original site):
Contact details buried — no sticky nav CTA
Value proposition absent from hero section
No testimonials, no case studies, no social proof
Legal pages missing — triggered fraud concern
Animated emojis undermined professional tone
3 competing CTAs per page — users froze
No clear niche: felt like it served everyone
After:
Sticky "Contact Us" CTA in nav — visible at every scroll position
Hero headline rewritten around user's goal, not company offering
Testimonials embedded at the credibility decision point (post-services)
Legal pages added to footer; privacy policy visible
Custom illustrations replaced emojis — approachable without being juvenile
One primary CTA per viewport — tested, trust improved
Niche made explicit: "for small businesses" in H1, above the fold
Warmth without losing credibility.
Most IT competitors were cold and technical, or safe and forgettable. My goal: make Rootline feel like neither.
Palette: Satin Deep Black (#142124) as primary, soft Gin (#D6DDCD) as secondary, Lima green (#B4FF69) as accent. Authority without aggression; energy without noise. PP Mori typography kept things modern and precise without feeling cold.
Illustration decision: I replaced a server rack stock photo with a custom illustration of a person at a laptop — centring the human outcome, not the infrastructure. In hi-fi testing, 3 of 5 participants described the site as "friendly." That word never appeared in feedback on the original site.
Outcomes & Reflection
Trust built through structure, not decoration.
By hi-fi testing, users navigated from hero to contact without confusion. The three questions they arrived with — what do they do, who have they worked with, how do I reach them — were answered in sequence, without a phone call needed.
The final hi-fi covered desktop, tablet, and mobile. Rootline's site went from a static information page to a confidence-building decision tool.
What I'd do differently: Run a desirability test earlier in the visual phase — before committing to the full hi-fi, I'd validate the brand direction with two or three small business owners.
What this project taught me: Trust is a structural problem before it's a visual one. The user journey map — showing the exact moment confidence collapsed — became the real brief for every screen that followed.
