Role & responsibility
UX Designer
Content Strategist
Copywriter
End-to-end ownership
Timeframe
February – August 2021
TEAM
1x UX Designer
3x Copywriters
1x Developer
SKILLS
UX research
SEO research
Content strategy
UX / UI design
Iconography
Wireframing
Copywriting
A/B testing
TOOLS
Google Analytics
Hotjar
SEMrush
Google Optimize
Overview
Dreams Beds (a well-known bed and mattress retailer in the UK) had an established blog covering sleep tips and lifestyle content. But a clear gap existed at the consideration stage of the buying journey. Questions related to the products had no dedicated pages on the site to answer them. Those search opportunities were being missed entirely.
I proposed, scoped and led the creation of “The Bed & Mattress Guide”: a structured hub of educational buying guides to answer users’ questions. Every guide was designed to educate users and move them seamlessly towards a purchase.
I worked on the editorial strategy, the information architecture, the wireframes, the iconography, the internal linking structure, and a significant portion of the written content. The hub launched in phases across Q2 and Q3 2021, and became one of the highest-performing content projects the site had seen.
Impact
A comprehensive buyers’ resource where none had existed before
Becoming one of the highest traffic sections on-site within 6 months of launch
Users who visited a guide before a product page converted at significantly higher rates
THE PROBLEM/S
Purchasing a bed or mattress is a long-term and high cost investment that users need to be clued up on before committing, and they had plenty of technical questions. Commonly searched questions asked about bed sizes, mattress type comparisons, mattress hygiene, advice on firmness and sleeping position – all of which were not being targeted on the Dreams site. Instead, virtually everything in the blog was awareness-stage material: articles about sleep health, what your dreams mean, etc. While it served a purpose, it wouldn’t help someone who was struggling to decide between a memory foam and a pocket spring mattress.
As well as this, internal linking to product pages was inconsistent, and there was no structured entry point for users in research mode. In short, Dreams was invisible at exactly the moment potential customers were most ready to be influenced.
USER RESEARCH
Before proposing anything formally, I spent time building more of an evidence base. I pulled from three sources: GA, on-site search data, and keyword research via SEMrush.
The internal site search query log was a particularly useful tool. A lot of terms searched within the site were regarding product education: “mattress types”, “bed sizes”, “divan vs ottoman beds”, “mattresses for side sleepers” These confirmed users actively trying to find content the site wasn’t providing.
Keyword research was the main data point that confirmed the demand for this content. High-volume, high-intent queries like “pocket sprung vs memory foam” and “UK bed size guide” had strong monthly search volumes and growing competitor coverage – but Dreams had no pages targeting them.
Hotjar heatmaps also revealed confusion on key product pages. For example, users repeatedly scrolling back up on mattress category pages, or several rage clicks on the mattress page filters. This suggested users didn’t feel equipped to make a choice with the information provided.
The conclusion was straightforward: build the content that users were already looking for.
COMPETITOR RESEARCH
Competitors also backed the data findings. I audited direct competitors and broader e-commerce brands known for strong content strategies. The brands converting well weren’t just selling, they were educating first.
Several UK bed and mattress retailers had already built dedicated guide sections. For example, key competitors Bensons for Beds and Silentnight had structured buying guide hubs sitting outside their main blog.
Other things competitors were doing well:
This painted a clear picture, most brands were not only offering educational content, but creating a separate space for it. At this point the idea of creating a guides hub, rather than increasing educational content within the blog, emerged.
EDITORIAL PLAN
Now we had the idea of creating a ‘hub’, we needed to first create enough content to fill the hub. So we started establishing what it should actually contain. I built an editorial plan, deciding our content based on:
The categories fell out of this exercise naturally:
Mattress types, sizes, firmness, mattress hygiene, etc.
Content explaining various bed types (divan, storage, ottoman, etc.)
Guides about kids’ mattresses, the right beds based on age groups, bunk bed safety, etc.
Guides explaining various types of duvets, pillows, mattress protectors and toppers
Guides on sleeping positions, sleeping with back pain, pregnancy, and how to choose the right products
The initial list ran to over 40 guides, but to ensure smooth delivery we aimed to just get 20 live for launch and the remaining 20+ as a second phase. Prioritisation was based primarily on search volume and commercial relevance (which guides would lead most directly to a product page). This editorial plan became the foundation for everything that followed: the hub structure, the internal linking strategy, and the phased delivery timeline.
DESIGN
Now the content was established, wireframes had to be created for both the hub overview page and the individual guides themselves. This was done in a LoFi format first.
For the hub overview page, the main design challenge was making a large volume of guides feel easy to navigate without overwhelming the user. The layout of grouping guides under clearly labelled topic headings and incorporating expand buttons meant content was condensed and easy to browse. The sections themselves were ordered based on search volume and commercial priority, with Mattress Guides leading.
The individual guide pages sat on their own URLs (an SEO decision to help increase organic traffic). They weren’t simple articles that followed a blog post structure, but rather their own resource, structured with clear headings, jump links, custom iconography, data visualisations, comparison tables, charts, shoppable products etc. As these guides were so different, it wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach and the design differed drastically depending on the type of content.
For this reason, individual guide wireframes were created on a page-by-page basis as the copy was written, with regular check-ins between me and the content team to ensure smooth collaboration. They were then shipped to Dream’s developer who built these pages on-site.
The iconography was something I felt strongly about from the start. I designed a set of custom icons to be used where relevant for certain guides. These were simple, consistent line icons that made the pages scannable, the information easier to digest, and gave the hub a distinct visual identity separate from the blog.
CHALLENGES
One of the more unexpected debates on this project was the name. Dreams came in with a strong preference for calling it “The Bed and Mattress Guide” – a branded, ownable name they felt reflected the content. My concern was a UX one: the singular word “Guide” doesn’t imply a hub of 40+ individual guides. From a user’s perspective, there is less appeal to click through, and if they do it could feel a little confusing.
Before phase 2, with enough traffic data to work with, I made the case to rename it. Calling it simply “Guides” – clear, functional, and immediately communicative of what the user would find. We A/B tested the original name against a simplified “Guides” label in the site navigation and hub header. The “Guides” variant saw a 19% higher click-through rate from the navigation, and a measurable reduction in exit rate on the hub page itself – suggesting the clearer label was setting better expectations before users arrived. So the change was made.
ITERATIONS
Once pages were built, we ran A/B tests across several key design decisions. I brought the content team and Dreams’ developer into short weekly check-ins throughout the testing period. Shared visibility on the data meant decisions felt more collaborative and made the team more willing to act on findings that challenged their initial instincts.
The original hub design presented every guide the same way: a full image tile, title, and descriptive text, with each category clearly signposted by a coloured banner header. Visually consistent, but in practice it created a wall of equally-weighted content that made it difficult for users to quickly identify the most useful guides for them. We tested a revised approach that mixed image tiles with text-only tiles, giving each section a clear visual hierarchy rather than treating every guide as equally important. The mixed approach resulted in a 26% increase in click-through rate on the top guides within each section. Users were navigating more decisively rather than scanning.
During phase 2 as the amount of content grew, we also tested how to handle the full list of guides within each section. We originally had an expand button to reveal further guides below the initial set, but with several new guides per category this resulted in page length becoming extensive and key content getting pushed further down. The second approach of using a horizontal carousel was then tested. The carousel outperformed the expand button with a 33% higher engagement rate on secondary guides (those that weren’t initially visible). Users were willing to scroll horizontally to explore, but the extra click to expand was enough friction to put them off. The carousel became the standard pattern across all sections.
UNIFORM IMAGE TILES & EXPAND BUTTONS
MIXED APPROACH & CAROUSELS
Every guide needed a CTA linking users to a relevant product category. Image-based CTAs, showing a product visual alongside the link, were tested against plain button CTAs. As predicted, image-based CTAs had a 38% higher click-through rate and drove significantly more add-to-basket events downstream. Image-based CTAs became the go-to across most guides, while also mixing in text-based CTAS where needed to not overwhelm the users.
TEXT-BASED CTAS
IMAGE-BASED CTAS
Having established that image-based CTAs performed better, we then tested the placement of those CTAs. We tested an inline CTA at roughly the mid-point of the guide against one placed at the end. The inline version had a 31% higher click-through rate. Meaning users were ready to move to product pages before finishing the article.
END OF PAGE CTAS
INLINE CTAS
Final Design
OUTCOME
The Bed & Mattress Guide launched in phases across Q2 and Q3 2021, with 20 guides live at launch and the full set completed by the end of the year. The impact was immediate and within 6 months of launch key metrics had dramatically improved.
The hub established Dreams as a visible and useful resource at the consideration stage of the buying journey
Guide content gave users the confidence to make a decision – reflected in significantly stronger conversion rates
Nearly three times the site-wide average. Users were reading the guides, not just skimming
Users entering via the hub explored far more of the site, following through to product pages and related guides
LEARNINGS
Deciding what to build, which guides, in which order, at what depth, required the same kind of structured thinking as any UX problem. Treating the editorial plan as a strategic exercise rather than a writing task gave the project a stronger structure going forward.
The debate about what to call the hub sounds trivial, but it had real UX consequences. A name sets expectations, and if it implies one guide when the user is about to find forty, that’s a friction point before a single piece of content has loaded. In future, I’d push for this conversation earlier on rather than letting it become a branding debate after phase 1.
Looking back on the design through a more experienced lens, certain UI elements should be incorporated to improve user navigation within the hub. For example, now that the guides have reached well over the original 40, category pages or a search bar would be warranted. I’d also consider a mobile-first design and question elements like the carousels for each viewport.
The weekly check-ins with the content team during the wireframe and testing phases were one of the most valuable things we did. When we were collaborating regularly and looking at the same data, decisions could be made more responsively and the project flowed much more smoothly as a result.
Get in touch to work together or just for a virtual coffee and a chat.
