Master PC
Builder
TIMELINE
July 2024 - Jan 2025
ROLE
Lead Product
Designer
SERVICES
UX/UI Design
User Research
Branding
Master PC
Master PC Builder builds, repairs, and sells high-performance custom PCs in Southern California. Their homepage sent visitors elsewhere in order to understand the product. I designed it to expand navigation buttons into a prioritized narrative that shipped to production and earned client approval.
Problem
The homepage was a directory, not a story
MPCB builds exceptional machines but their homepage didn't show it. Everything that mattered — builds, services, the gallery — was presented as a row of flat image buttons that did one thing: send you somewhere else. For the enthusiast who knew what they wanted, this was sufficient. For everyone else, it was a dead end disguised as a menu.
ORIGINAL DESIGN BRIEF
Visual Refresh
Modernize a dated design that didn't reflect the quality of the product.
REFRAMED DESIGN BRIEF
Structure & Clarity
The audit made the call for me: buttons that only linked out, a hero that asked users to scroll to find out what MPCB even offered. The real problem wasn't aesthetics, it was architecture. The homepage couldn't convert first-time visitors because it never explained the product to them.
Research
Where do users lose the thread between landing and buying?
The timeline didn't allow for recruiting real users — and the problem read as structural, not a matter of taste. So I chose the highest-signal methods I could run solo: a competitive audit across custom PC retailers plus a heuristic review of MPCB's own homepage. Both pointed at the same pattern: homepages that point outward instead of explaining inward, and configuration paths that assume expertise. Newcomers had no on-ramp.
COMPETITIVE & HEURISTIC ANALYSIS FINDINGS
Let the homepage do the explaining and surface the offering in priority order for both audiences.
FINDING 01
THE HOMEPAGE OUTSOURCED ITS MEANING
FINDING 03
CONFIGURATION TOOLS ASSUMED EXPERTISE
Two Visitors, Two Needs
The audit pointed at a single root tension: the site served one type of visitor and ignored the other. I built two personas from what the client knew about who actually buys from them: the enthusiast who arrives ready to spec and the first-timer who doesn't. Grounding them in MPCB's real customers kept every downstream decision anchored to a need, not a guess.
Solution
Turning a directory of buttons into a guided narrative
I rebuilt each button into a full section with context and a clear CTA, then sequenced them by priority, moving visitors from "what is this" to "here's where I start." I treated this as a restructuring problem first, visual second. The sequence was the design: curiosity → orientation → confidence.
Once content lived on the homepage, the weak structure underneath it became more obvious. I expanded the architecture to match, most notably, turning "Shop" into a graduated path: pre-builts → tiered builds → custom → consultation. It's a ladder with each step asking for a little more commitment with a human at the end if you need one. That's the beginner on-ramp built into the IA itself.
Original sitemap prior to redesign.
Updated sitemap with added/expanded sections post redesign.
Homepage evolution from V0 → V2
Three passes, each fixing a different failure. From a directory of buttons, to real sections with a split personality, to one unified dark narrative. The page didn't just get prettier, it got coherent one decision at a time.
Multiple shopping entry points were designed based on levels of user confidence
PC buyers don't arrive with the same level of knowledge or desire for control. Rather than forcing everyone into a fully custom configuration flow, I structured the shopping experience around progressively higher levels of involvement.
