Chicago Wheel Express
Overview
How I helped a B2B wheel company transform into a consumer brand — and grow revenue by 35%
Project duration:
2021 – 2024 (UX & digital launch: 2021–2022)
My role:
Senior UX Designer & Marketing Lead
Tools:
Figma, Google Suite, Adobe Suite
Outcome: 70% traffic growth · 35% revenue increase · First consumer digital presence built from zero
Chicago Wheel Express had been a trusted B2B wheel repair operation for a decade — solid reputation, strong operational infrastructure, loyal distributor relationships. But the business had hit a ceiling. Leadership saw an opportunity in the Chicagoland consumer market. The problem: There was no website, no consumer brand, and no understanding of what local buyers actually needed.
I was brought in as the company's first UX and digital lead. My role evolved quickly from "build a website" into something much broader: design the entire digital ecosystem from scratch, define how the brand would speak to consumers for the first time, and create the infrastructure that would turn an offline operation into a B2C-ready business.
The core design challenge: How do you design a first-time digital experience for a customer segment the business has never spoken to — in a category where trust, locality, and credibility are everything?
The Problem
The business lacked:
-
Online visibility
-
Consumer accessibility
-
Structured lead generation
-
Brand positioning for B2C audiences
The risk wasn’t poor UX.
The risk was invisibility.
The Goal
Business Goal
Expand beyond B2B into a hybrid B2B/B2C model and establish local market presence.
Product Goals
-
Build the company’s first website
-
Establish digital brand identity
-
Create a lead-generation funnel
-
Improve local search visibility
-
Drive measurable revenue growth
Product Strategy
This was a live commercial engagement with real business constraints and a defined budget — so I built consumer understanding by designing around those constraints, using every available signal to inform decisions.
I gathered insights through every available channel:
-
Stakeholder interviews — what leadership knew about their customers after 10 years of B2B relationships
-
Competitor analysis — how other local and national wheel services presented themselves online and where they fell short
-
Social media listening — how Chicago consumers talked about wheel services, what language they used, what they complained about
-
A/B testing post-launch feedback — quote form submissions and direct calls revealed what customers needed that the site wasn't yet providing
Competitive audit
Key Decisions
Mobile-first, always
Consumers were finding the site through local search on their phones — someone with a damaged wheel, researching on the go. Every design decision started with the mobile screen. Desktop was secondary.
Trust before features
With no reviews and no prior consumer presence, the homepage had one job: prove we're legitimate. I led with years in business, real shop photography, and a clear Chicago-local identity — credibility signals before anything else.
"Request a Quote" instead of public pricing
Pricing varies too much to list publicly without creating confusion or lost leads. I designed a simple quote request form as the primary CTA — low friction for the consumer, useful context for the business.
Social proof through content, not a static gallery
After launch, customers kept asking to see examples of the work before booking. Rather than building a static gallery, I led a content quality overhaul on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter — better photography, stronger captions, consistent visual language. It answered the trust question and became a growth channel at the same time.
Resolving the CTA disagreement with data
Leadership wanted a phone number as the primary CTA. I believed a form would convert better with consumer audiences. Instead of debating it, we tested both — and the data made the decision for us.
Data-informed product iteration
The Hypothesis
Leadership wanted a phone number as the primary CTA — it was how they'd always closed business. My instinct said a quote request form would convert better with a consumer audience searching on mobile. Rather than debating it, I proposed we test both and let the data decide.
The Test
I designed two versions of the homepage CTA: one leading with the phone number, one leading with the quote form. We ran both simultaneously and tracked which drove more completed contacts over the first few weeks post-launch.
Part of my hypothesis was functional: the form allowed customers to upload photos of their wheels directly, giving the team the context they needed to provide an accurate quote before the first call. That removed friction on both sides — customers got a real number faster, and the team spent less time on back-and-forth calls gathering basic information.
The Result
The form outperformed the phone CTA in completed lead actions. Leadership aligned behind it — not because I convinced them, but because the data did. The phone number stayed visible on the page, but the form became the primary conversion path.
The bigger win wasn't the metric. It was establishing a shared language with stakeholders: design decisions at Chicago Wheel Express would be driven by evidence, not opinion.
Site map
Danna's Notes I prioritized the service menu and warranty in the main navigation because local service customers make trust decisions based on transparency — they want to know what you offer before they call.
User flow
Wireframes
I redesigned the website to transform an outdated and inconsistent experience into a clearer, more conversion-focused platform. My goal was to reduce friction, build trust, and help users navigate and book services faster through improved hierarchy, usability, and customer flow.
Danna's Notes The new experience improves: Navigation clarity Service discoverability Booking accessibility Visual hierarchy Customer confidence Mobile-friendly structure Lead generation opportunities
Booking process
Services
Home page
Customers:
To build trust
Social media
70
Growth in
%
website traffic
The Outcome
Within the first year:
70% growth in website traffic
35% increase in revenue — the first consumer-driven growth in 10 years
Phone-only contact replaced by a structured digital funnel
Social media transformed from a static page into an active trust and growth channel
What I Learned
Real-world UX rarely follows a textbook process — and that's not a weakness, it's the job. The most valuable moment on this project was replacing a CTA disagreement with a test: it turned a conflict into a shared decision made by evidence, not opinion. And the most important feature we built wasn't planned at the start — users told us they needed it after launch.
35
Increase
%
in revenue
Next Steps
If this project were continuing:
-
Moderated usability testing on the quote request flow
-
SEO content strategy for local search capture
-
Reviews integration to build public social proof
-
Analytics review of social content to determine what drives the most site referrals