Notary Cafe
Notary Cafe's homepage on a laptop on a walnut desk in a notary's office: a leather folder, a fountain pen, a stamp and law books around it

Directory / Web platform / Redesign

Notary Cafe

Notary search directory. Responsive web platform.

Role
Lead Product Designer
When
During Bix Agency years
Platform
Responsive web platform
Product
National notary directory service

Notary Café is the number one resource for connecting professional notaries with the people who need them.

Whether you are a notary or in need of one, you can benefit from their community.

The new Notary Cafe homepage: a photograph, a search by place and clear sections

How we got to a 30% increase in the site’s users in the first six months after the launch.

The challenge

The challenge was to update the website’s UI, but also improve the site’s usability while improving it as a product.

The old Notary Cafe site: three pages in brown and beige, crowded with small text
Old.
The new Notary Cafe homepage: a photograph, a search by place and clear sections
New.

The solution

I ended up creating a simple interface for finding a notary, helping the users find and get in touch with one easily.

To improve the product itself, I designed an enhanced profile setup page, a dashboard that shows notaries how they are performing on the platform, and a mailbox inside the notary account, which removed the frustration of linking an email address and switching between tabs.

The user flows, mapped. Point at a step (or tap it) to follow where it leads and what leads to it.

Impact

$1M
annual recurring revenue within 12 months of launching the subscription
250k
notaries countrywide within 12 months
30%
increase in the site’s users in the first six months after the launch

  1. Homepage

Homepage

Notary Cafe's new homepage: a photograph of a handshake, a search by place, what the site does and its numbers under it
  • Search for notaries in Portland, OR on a phone: a place field, a Search members button and a map with pins
    The search on a phone

Dashboard analytics

A notary's dashboard: profile completion at 72%, profile views, favourites, leads and enquiries, and two charts over time
How a notary is doing on the platform.
Membership payment in the notary's account: choose a plan, add a card, upgrade to Pro
Membership, paid for inside the account.

Reflection

Turning a simple directory into a usable and commercially viable product felt like building a startup from scratch.

Previous projectDSU Emergency AlertsCivic / MobileNext projectSweat WalletCrypto / Consumer fintech