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SERVICES
ORGANISATION
Lloyd's of London
ROLE
Senior UX/UI Design Lead
SCALE
Over 3 million visits a year, unlocked an 18 month full site redesign
The short of it (tld;dr)
Key results
73.1 per cent of homepage visitors engaged with content, up from 3.5 per cent
65 per cent of investors took the new visual report path, averaging over 2 minutes of read time
More than 3,000 pages being rolled out using the new platform layout and design system
Record scroll depth achieved on the annual report page, turning a PDF download link into the site's most-read page
18 month contract unlocked from a single navigation fix
The core story
The initial fix: The old main menu was bloated, causing nearly 9 out of 10 visitors to leave within 16 seconds. A simple menu trial proved visitors wanted clear goal-based paths, which tripled homepage success straight away
The user intent framework: I replaced the flawed client assumption of two fixed groups with a framework built around three user goals: to learn, to access tools, and to evaluate options.
The full redesign: This early win earned the trust to lead an 18 month platform overhaul. We built a flexible design system and framework now rolling out across more than 3,000 pages.
Example impact: I turned the annual results page into an interactive visual story that became the most read page on the site, while driving homepage engagement to 73.1 per cent. An intent p
A broken menu, and the sprint that fixed it.
The project didn't begin with a redesign. It began with a navigation review. The global nav was a bloated mega-menu that barely worked: clicks and hovers were unresponsive and erratic, and items were given top-of-list priority while receiving as few as two clicks a year, on a site serving 2.6M+. I reviewed how people actually moved through the site, tested the organisation's assumptions, and delivered a focused fix. It worked, and its success is what unlocked everything that followed.
One test mattered most. The organisation assumed two audiences, so I placed an “I want to…” signpost in the hero: one path to learn, one to access resources. If the two-group model were right, people would self-sort. They didn't. They ignored it and used the redesigned global navigation instead, the first sign that the two-group model wasn't real, and that navigation was the true lever.
The main menu before our fix. It crammed dozens of links into one box, broke across screens, and caused 88 per cent of visitors to leave.
The redesigned main menu. We grouped options into three clear main sections at the top. Choices open step by step using plain, human language so visitors never feel overwhelmed.
The global navigation before the redesign. Clunky, overwhelming, too many options and not responsive to the viewports.
The win earned a full redesign. So I did the deep work.
The navigation fix proved the case and secured a six-figure budget for a full platform redesign. I created the strategy and proposal, then ran a proper discovery phase: I went back over a year of analytics to understand how people really used the platform, and interviewed stakeholders, users, members of the Lloyd's Market and department heads. The strategy came out of that evidence, not ahead of it.
THE KEY INSIGHT
The data didn't say “two audiences.” It said something more useful.
The organisation had read its analytics as two distinct audiences, and assumed a two-lane website. Discovery told a more precise story: the two groups genuinely didn't cross over, journeys were dying at one or two clicks, and nothing encouraged anyone to move between content. The problem was never two audiences needing two lanes. It was a site that never invited anyone to go deeper.
Three intents, and the movement between them.
The strategy ran on a single idea: people don't arrive as fixed audiences, they arrive with intent, and the same person moves between intents. I built the intent framework around three: Learn, Access, Evaluate. It became the basis for the user journeys and experiences across the site, and later, secure login areas and tools.
Learn
Build understanding through clarity and trust.
Access
Remove friction and build confidence, so people can find tools and get things done.
Evaluate
Empower informed decisions by letting people assess trust and performance.
The three-intent hero selector, the working answer to the failed two-option chooser. Learn, Access, Evaluate as entry points, built to move people between them. The same pattern was designed to repeat across pages and components.
My concept for a narrative-led annual results page, pitched and built as part of the redesign. It's the site's most-visited page every year, and this version holds the record for deepest scroll depth and longest read time. Previously, users hit "download report" and left. This year they read the page end to end before touching the pinned CTA.
Building a system for scale
The navigation fix opened the door. The redesign it unlocked was the whole platform, and I led it from strategy and discovery through to launch and aftercare.
Evidence into direction
Turned a year of analytics and interviews into actionable direction, and presented it to stakeholders, making the case with data, not opinion.
Aftercare
Didn't stop at launch. I iterated on components against post-launch analytics, improving their performance after go-live, where most redesigns hand off and leave.
The design system, built from scratch: tokens, components and documentation the team could build from directly.
Beyond the three intents, two principles shaped the build. Accessibility, bringing the platform to WCAG AA. And structuring content for clarity and reliable retrieval, improving contextual search and filtering so answers held up, and anticipating AI-driven discovery.
A mobile-first fix for a filter-heavy site: a bottom sheet. Tap to narrow, tap again to dig deeper.
THE HARD PART
Modern, for something 330 years old.
The constraint was the design problem. How do you make a 330-year-old institution feel contemporary without making it feel unfamiliar to the people who trust it? Fixed heritage brand elements that couldn't move. A conservative user base you can't alienate. Many stakeholders to bring along. 2.6M+ users a year who can't be disrupted. Restraint at that scale is harder than freedom, and it's the whole job.
Impact over two acts.
Two acts, two sets of results. First the navigation fix got people moving. Then the full redesign got them to stay and go deeper.
Act 1: The fix that proved the point.
A focused navigation sprint, and the numbers made the case on their own. These are the results that secured a six-figure budget to redesign the rest.
Act 2: The journeys worth taking.
Measured in a post-launch performance review across six redesigned pages. And because I stayed through aftercare, iterating on components against post-launch data, these numbers kept improving after launch, not just at it.
In their own words
"The most precise and detailed designs and documentation I've ever worked with. It made our whole dev process faster and cleaner, and the designs themselves were something else entirely."
Duncan
Development Lead, Technology partner
