doTERRA
·
Apr 2018 - Jul 2018
doTERRA
Four visual directions for rethinking doTERRA's website, developed with the WQA design team and presented to the client.
Role
Visual Designer
Timeline
Apr 2018 - Jul 2018
Team
WQA design team
Platform
Web / Mobile
Overview
Four directions for a wellness brand's website
doTERRA is an essential oils and wellness company with a large product range and a strong brand story. Through the agency WQA, I joined the design team on a website redesign exploration: how a new site could bring doTERRA's products together with the story behind the brand. As a visual designer, my work ran across all four of the routes the team developed, with UX input where the layouts took shape, and fed into the client presentation that put them in front of doTERRA.
Four routes
Distinct directions, each balancing brand story and product differently
Real page types
Home, product detail and mobile layouts for every route
Client presentation
The routes compared side by side for doTERRA
Challenge
Balancing brand story and product visibility
doTERRA's website had two jobs that pull in different directions: telling the story of where its oils come from and what the brand stands for, and making a large product range easy to see and buy. Lean too far towards story and the products disappear; too far towards products and the site becomes a catalogue. The exploration needed to show doTERRA genuinely different answers to that balance, not four versions of one idea.
How could a redesigned website balance doTERRA's brand story with product visibility, and what would each balance look like across real page types?
Approach
Four routes, tested against the same pages
Exploring the direction
We developed four routes. One led with botanical sourcing and the brand’s story. Another used people and lifestyle imagery to bring the brand closer to everyday use. A third paired a cleaner, more spacious layout with product and story content. The fourth put the oils and ingredients at the centre, with bold ingredient photography and benefit-led messaging.
Each route struck a different balance between explaining the brand and making the products visible, which made the choice in front of doTERRA a strategic one rather than a matter of taste.
The four routes side by side, each with its home page and mobile layouts.
Testing each route on real pages
A direction only means something once it meets real content. The presentation compared the four routes side by side, then showed how each would work across desktop pages, product detail and mobile layouts, so doTERRA could judge them against the pages the site actually needed rather than a single hero image. Social-style mockups showed how each direction might carry beyond the site.
Left Route 1: botanical sourcing and brand story. Right Route 2: people and lifestyle.
Left Route 3: spacious product and story. Right Route 4: bold ingredients.
Route 3 as a full page, a conceptual work in progress: product first, with the story in support.
Working across the routes
The routes and the presentation were developed jointly by the WQA team. My visual design work ran across all four, alongside UX input where the layouts took shape, which meant keeping each route distinct and true to its own idea while the team refined them in parallel.
Outcome
Four clear choices for doTERRA
The team presented doTERRA with four distinct, fully illustrated directions for its website, each shown across desktop, product and mobile pages, giving the client a clear basis for choosing how its brand and products should balance online.
Status
Presented to doTERRA
Presented to doTERRA
Reflection
Alternatives should be genuinely different
Working across all four routes meant keeping each one true to its own idea, so the differences stayed sharp as the team refined them in parallel. Four routes are only useful if they represent four real choices, story against shelf, so the client is choosing a strategy rather than a colour scheme. I hold any set of alternatives to that test: an option only earns its place if it offers a genuinely different answer.
