Case Study

Crafting a Modern Digital Narrative for Best Buy

Timeline
3 months

My Role
UX Designer & Engineering Lead

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overview

Best Buy’s corporate blog—the company’s central hub for public-facing news, press releases, and brand storytelling—was long overdue for a modern overhaul. An outdated design, slow performance, and a clunky backend were limiting its effectiveness as a communication tool.

As a one-person team, I led the complete redesign and rebuild, guiding the project from strategy to deployment. I transformed a sluggish, hard-to-manage blog into a sleek, scalable platform that improved performance, empowered internal teams, and elevated the overall brand experience.

the challenge

Through stakeholder discovery and technical audits, I uncovered key issues affecting both the front-end experience and back-end usability:

  • ⚡ Poor UX & Navigation
    Visitors struggled to understand the site’s purpose and locate core resources like press materials, corporate updates, and culture content. Navigation lacked hierarchy, and key content was buried.
  • ⚡ Performance Bottlenecks
    The homepage alone was over 10MB, with large, unoptimized images causing load times of up to 45 seconds on mobile. This severely impacted usability, engagement, and SEO.
  • ⚡ Content Management Gaps
    Non-technical teams were forced to rely on developers for updates. The rigid backend made content publishing and experimentation difficult, slowing down communication workflows.

Best Buy needed a site that felt modern, aligned with their Fortune 500 reputation, and gave teams the autonomy to share timely stories.

my approach

I led the end-to-end transformation—from strategy and research to development and deployment—within a tight timeline.

Discovery & Research
I kicked off with stakeholder interviews, UX audits, and performance testing using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. This helped me define success metrics, prioritize goals, and identify immediate performance fixes.

Strategic Recommendations
I proposed a mobile-first, modular design approach supported by a robust WordPress theme and builder. My recommendations focused on:

  • Mobile optimization (critical, as 2/3 of traffic came from mobile)
  • A more intuitive, flexible content structure
  • Scalable backend powered by Visual Composer + ACF Pro
  • Improved search capabilities (SearchWP was recommended, but ultimately deprioritized due to time constraints)
  • Email integration for media alerts and newsletters (planned but not implemented due to tool unavailability at the time)

Design & Development Execution

  • Redesigned the entire site, introducing key new sections like Press Kits, Environmental Sustainability, Inclusion & Belonging, and Awards & Recognition.
  • Built modular templates with flexible content blocks for future scalability.
  • Integrated performance enhancements, including image optimization (via Imagify), caching, and asset cleanup.
  • Implemented a mega menu, making the site easier to navigate for media, job seekers, and stakeholders.
  • Trained teams on how to use the new backend through documentation in Confluence and recorded walkthroughs.
  • Led deployment, preserving SEO, accessibility, and uptime.

This wasn’t just a cosmetic redesign—it was a foundational shift that modernized the entire publishing experience.

the impact

The transformation was immediate and wide-reaching:

  • ⚡ 6-second improvement in Speed Index on mobile and improved overall Core Web Vitals. Addressing image optimization and compression helped prevent what could have been up to 45 seconds of additional load time—delivering a significant boost in speed, engagement, and search rankings.
  • ⚡ Empowered internal teams with drag-and-drop tools and templates—no dev needed to publish content.
  • ⚡ Created 10+ new, high-value pages, enabling the company to tell a richer, more complete brand story.
  • ⚡ Delivered a modern, branded, mobile-first platform that matches the polish of Best Buy’s customer-facing properties.

The blog became a trusted resource again—not just for external audiences, but for internal teams who could finally work efficiently and independently.

visual preview

Before

A snapshot of the original challenges faced by users and content editors:

  • Difficult navigation: Users found navigation unintuitive.
  • Outdated visuals: Visual design did not align with modern brand aesthetics.
  • Rigid CMS: Limited flexibility in creating engaging content.
Before: Best Buy Corporate News and Information January 2021

After

A redesigned experience focused on clarity, flexibility, and engagement:

  • Intuitive UX: Clear navigation paths guiding users effortlessly to key content and resources.
  • Responsive & Accessible: Optimized user experience across mobile, tablet, and desktop, ensuring compliance with accessibility standards.
  • Flexible CMS Components: Editors easily create and manage dynamic content layouts without technical dependency, using customized WordPress templates.

Ready to modernize your platform?

let’s build something better

Whether you’re a growing brand or an enterprise company, I bring full-stack UX thinking, technical depth, and performance-first design to every project.