Role & responsibility
Senior UX Designer
Copywriter
Page builder
Project manager
End-to-end ownership
Timeframe
February – May 2024
TEAM
1x UX Designer
5x Copywriters
SKILLS
UX research
Data analysis
UX / UI Design
Wireframing
Copywriting
Page building
Web design systems
Project management
TOOLS
Figma
Microsoft Clarity
Google Analytics
WordPress
Midjourney
Overview
In February 2024, Babbel launched a company-wide rebrand where everything changed – new colours, new typography, new illustration style, updated tone of voice, and overhauled image guidelines. All of this needed to be reflected across Babbel’s B2B website babbelforbusiness.com. This meant redesigning around 80 pages that spanned across 6 geographic markets, so 480 pages in total.
With no project manager, an understaffed content team, and a hard deadline at the end of Q2, I stepped into a role that stretched well beyond design. I owned the project end-to-end, from building the sitemap and prioritisation framework, to wireframing, even copywriting, building a full web design system, and shipping every page.
Long story short: we hit the deadline and the new site delivered a 60% increase in conversion rate site-wide.
Impact
Every market and every page fully aligned to the new brand by deadline
A reusable system of components, type scales, and UI patterns that set the team up for long-term consistency
The rebrand directly drove more users toward high-value actions, demo bookings, pricing enquiries, and sign-ups
THE PROBLEM/S
The rebrand directive came from the top, covering new colours, fonts, iconography, but the brief for how to actually implement this across a nearly 500 page website didn’t exist. With no project manager assigned and a content team already stretched thin, there was a real risk of the whole thing becoming unmanageable fast.
The scale of the task was significant:
With such a small team, it was clear that trying to give every page equal attention would mean delivering nothing well. So a clear prioritisation strategy had to be developed.
USER RESEARCH
Before touching a single wireframe, I needed to understand which pages actually mattered most to the business and to users to create some sort of priority. I pulled data from GA to map where users were spending time, where they were converting, and where they were dropping off.
Key findings:
This confirmed the approach: high-priority pages needed a full redesign with fresh copy, considering not only the aesthetics but also the UX. For now, lower-priority pages could just undergo a reskin to match the new brand without taking too much time.
DESIGN DECISIONS
Given the constraints, the most important design decision wasn’t a visual one – it was structural. I built a sitemap listing every page on the site and mapped out the geos it existed in (to make matters more confusing, some pages only existed in a couple of languages).
Once we had a clear list of every asset across all 6 markets, I created a prioritisation framework that divided them into the two tiers. This wasn’t a compromise. It was a deliberate, data-backed call that let us protect quality where it mattered most.
High-conversion pages, for example:
These received the full works, including UX research to assess the page’s performance, deciding improvements (new sections, CTA placement, etc), wireframes and fresh copy written to the new TOV. As these were highest priority and would take the biggest chunk of time, these were focused on and built first.
Lower-priority pages, for example:
These received updated typography, colours, and image treatments to bring them in line with the new brand, without the full design and copy overhaul. As these pages had less traffic, we could get to them later.
DESIGN SYSTEM
Before any page could be built, thorough guidelines for the new brand in a web context needed to be created. The provided brandbook covered print and product, but not web specifically. Therefore I set to building a web design system in Figma that translated the new identity into:
This became the foundation that everything else was built on and was handed back to the team as a long-term asset once the project wrapped.
WIREFRAMES
With a tight timeline, I had to move through the wireframe process quickly without cutting corners on the pages that mattered most.
My process:
CHALLENGES
With a project this size touching marketing, product, content, sales, and development. Stakeholder management was just as important as the design work itself.
The main challenges were:
Final Design
The finished site brought together a fully updated visual identity – new type hierarchy, refreshed colour system, updated imagery and illustration style. With a restructured content approach on Tier 1 pages and a clean, consistent reskin across Tier 2, every page across all 6 geos was live and on-brand by the end of May 2024.
HOME PAGE – BEFORE
After
Product PAGE – BEFORE
After
OUTCOME
Although the deadline was met, the real measure was whether the new site actually performed better for users and the business.
Demo requests, pricing enquiries, and sign-ups all rose significantly following the rebrand launch
Beyond the immediate project, creating the web design system set us up for all future work
Cleaner hierarchy, stronger CTAs and better content kept users from bouncing on key landing pages
Aligning product names with real search behaviour brought an immediate and measurable spike in traffic to the site
LEARNINGS
The decision to split pages into two tiers – full redesign vs reskin – was probably the single most important call made on this project. Without it, trying to do everything at full quality would have meant doing nothing particularly well or not hitting deadline. Learning to make that kind of structured prioritisation call early, and communicate it clearly to stakeholders, is something I’d apply immediately on any similar project.
Taking on copywriting and project management alongside design wasn’t comfortable, but it helped streamline the project and ensure it was done thoroughly. Being willing to stretch and being honest with the team about what I was taking on kept things moving.
Investing time at the start to build a proper design system felt like a risk when the clock was already running. But it paid back every hour spent, many times over. Consistent components now means faster builds, fewer QA issues, and much cleaner handoffs.
Noticing that a product naming issue was quietly hurting organic traffic obviously wasn’t in my job description. But raising it, and backing it with data, turned out to be one of the higher-impact contributions of the project and of the B2B division overall. The lesson: don’t be afraid to flag something that falls outside your remit.
Get in touch to work together or just for a virtual coffee and a chat.
