This is an ongoing case study and project.
Tulsa Clubhouse is a locally owned event space available for private rental (parties, weddings, showers, retirement events) that also hosts a free weekly community event, Second Story Sessions, where local musicians perform new work or practice for their peers. The business was preparing for a rebrand and website redesign, and needed UX research to inform structure and strategy before applying new visual design.
Tulsa Clubhouse's website was attracting a growing volume of high-intent visitors — traffic had grown more than 400% year-over-year, and roughly a third of engaged visitors navigated straight to the pricing-equivalent page — but converting almost none of them into inquiries. Click-to-contact rate sat under 1%, and the site had no dedicated space for the venue's biggest differentiator, its weekly community event. The site functioned as a brochure, not a booking or community-building tool, leaving the business dependent on referrals and word of mouth rather than the website itself.
Help a high-intent visitor on the rental page take the next step, when today under 1% do?
Help visitors self-sort into "private rental" vs. "community event" within the first few seconds on the homepage?
Introduce Second Story Sessions in a way that builds a returning audience, given returning visitors currently sit at just 8%?
1,742 sessions over 12 months produced only 14 total contact clicks (9 phone, 5 email, 0 WhatsApp) — a sub-1% click-to-contact rate
81% of all sessions start on the homepage; of visitors who go deeper, 33% head straight to the pricing-equivalent page, a strong buying-intent signal
53% of visitors drop off after the first page, and 60% of those who reach the pricing page leave without contacting anyone
Returning visitors sit at 8%, and social referral traffic at 11% — both below the benchmark for fast-growing peers in this venue category (25% social)
The rentals log shows revenue is currently driven by referrals and repeat clients, not the website
I audited three comparable Tulsa event venues to understand conventions for pricing transparency, booking flow, and audience segmentation: Vinterra (upscale wedding/event venue), The Bellview (historic building; weddings, social, and corporate events), and Zora Studio (small multi-use space, closest in scale to Tulsa Clubhouse).
Based on the analytics and audit, the five pages the owner requested were mapped into a structure that puts the conversion gap and the community differentiator at the center: Homepage forks into Rental Inquiry, Community Events, and About, with Rental Inquiry and Community Events both leading into a Contact/Booking page carrying the embedded HoneyBook form.The audit refined what belongs inside these pages rather than the page structure itself — the Rental Inquiry page needed to absorb pricing and availability signaling that competitors spread across multiple pages, and the Community Events page needed elevated visual/content treatment as a differentiator, without adding pages beyond the owner's original five.
To keep both sides of the marketplace in view while designing, I built two personas grounded directly in the survey data above:
She's the reason the Rental Inquiry page leads with "Starting at $X / evening," shows capacity and setup options immediately, and embeds a live availability calendar instead of forcing an inquiry just to ask "is this date available?" Every one of the current site's weak points (sub-1% click-to-contact, 53% bounce rate) is arguably her bouncing off exactly the friction this page now removes.
They're the reason Second Story Sessions got a full dedicated page instead of a buried nav link, with atmosphere photos and a plain "doors open 7:00 PM, free admission" callout instead of a sales pitch.
Using ValidateThat.io, I created a tree test to ensure the menu labels didn't cause confusion for Tulsa Clubhouse users.
Address the citywide sprawl directly rather than relying on visitor motivation alone. Given the genuine interest in the scavenger hunt concept, I'm planning a formalized bingo-card or "passport" activity for 2027 — designed and owned as part of the core event this time, rather than left to last-minute artist initiative.
This will help ensure that good ideas from a participating creatives don't depend on word-of-mouth to reach attendees.
None of these undo the case for the pivot itself — artist inclusion mattered more than preserving the original footprint — but they're the concrete next-iteration backlog it created, grounded in what users said afterward rather than assumptions about what "citywide" would require.
This will help ensure that good ideas from a participating creatives don't depend on word-of-mouth to reach attendees.
None of these undo the case for the pivot itself — artist inclusion mattered more than preserving the original footprint — but they're the concrete next-iteration backlog it created, grounded in what users said afterward rather than assumptions about what "citywide" would require.
If I ran this again, three things stand out as the highest-leverage fixes, all downstream of the citywide expansion:
Two independent respondents hit the same friction point unprompted — that's a real signal, not noise.
Address the citywide sprawl directly rather than relying on visitor motivation alone. Given the genuine interest in the scavenger hunt concept, I'm planning a formalized bingo-card or "passport" activity for 2027 — designed and owned as part of the core event this time, rather than left to last-minute artist initiative.
This will help ensure that good ideas from a participating creatives don't depend on word-of-mouth to reach attendees.
None of these undo the case for the pivot itself — artist inclusion mattered more than preserving the original footprint — but they're the concrete next-iteration backlog it created, grounded in what users said afterward rather than assumptions about what "citywide" would require.
If I ran this again, three things stand out as the highest-leverage fixes, all downstream of the citywide expansion:
Two independent respondents hit the same friction point unprompted — that's a real signal, not noise.
Address the citywide sprawl directly rather than relying on visitor motivation alone. Given the genuine interest in the scavenger hunt concept, I'm planning a formalized bingo-card or "passport" activity for 2027 — designed and owned as part of the core event this time, rather than left to last-minute artist initiative.
This will help ensure that good ideas from a participating creatives don't depend on word-of-mouth to reach attendees.
None of these undo the case for the pivot itself — artist inclusion mattered more than preserving the original footprint — but they're the concrete next-iteration backlog it created, grounded in what users said afterward rather than assumptions about what "citywide" would require.
