👤
Deepak Rao
Data Engineering Team Lead, 33
Goals
- Evaluate OpenMetadata for team adoption
- Understand integration depth with existing stack
- Find documentation and quickstart guides quickly
Pain Points
- Feature-focused homepage ignores use-case clarity
- No comparison with paid alternatives like Collibra
🧑
Aarav Mehta
Open Source Contributor, 26
Goals
- Find contribution guides and project architecture docs
- Understand roadmap and community governance
- Connect with other contributors and join community Slack
Pain Points
- GitHub and Slack links buried below the fold
- No clear community entry points on the homepage
👩
Sunita Iyer
Data Infrastructure Architect, 41
Goals
- Benchmark OpenMetadata against Alation and Collibra
- Understand self-hosted vs managed deployment options
- Get indicative pricing before engaging sales
Pain Points
- No self-hosted vs managed comparison on the site
- Vague "enterprise" section without concrete specifics
CHALLENGE 01
📄
Feature-First Copywriting
The site led with what OpenMetadata was — not what it did for you. "Metadata
ingestion for 120+ connectors" communicates nothing to a data leader. Every section needed an
outcome-first inversion.
CHALLENGE 02
🔗
Poor Conversion Path
Technical visitors had no clear path from interest to action. The journey
from homepage to community join, sandbox trial, or docs was buried under competing calls-to-action at
the same visual weight.
CHALLENGE 03
🏗️
Visual Hierarchy Failure
Integration logos, code snippets, feature cards, and marketing copy all
competed at identical visual weight. Proof points — case studies, integrations, and community size —
were not surfaced where visitors needed them.
CHALLENGE 04
⚖️
No Differentiation from Paid Alternatives
Enterprise visitors evaluating governance solutions needed a clear answer to
"why OpenMetadata over Alation or Collibra?" The site made no attempt to answer this, losing high-intent
enterprise visitors silently.
FINDING 01
42%
Bounce Before First Scroll
42% of homepage visitors were bouncing before scrolling past the hero —
indicating the above-the-fold value proposition was failing to create immediate relevance for any of the
three visitor types.
FINDING 02
73%
Multi-Page Technical Buyers
73% of technical buyers visit 5 or more pages before initiating contact with an
open-source project. A site with poor internal linking and no guided journey was failing to retain this
high-intent segment across their research cycle.
FINDING 03
Top Exit
Integrations as Drop-Off Point
The integrations page was the top exit point — visitors arrived expecting a
searchable, filterable catalog and found a flat list. Redesigning integrations as a trust-signal catalog
became a primary design priority.
STEP 01
Land on Homepage
Visitor arrives via search, referral, or GitHub. Hero immediately frames
OpenMetadata around their outcome, not the product's feature list.
STEP 02
Understand the Product
The hero section leads with "your data team deserves to know their data" —
anchoring value before revealing mechanism. Each persona finds their natural entry point.
STEP 03
Explore Features
Outcome-led feature sections guide visitors through discovery, lineage,
governance, and quality — with persona-specific depth cues for developers and enterprise buyers.
STEP 04
Check Integrations
Searchable, filterable integration catalog with 120+ connectors spanning
databases, cloud storage, pipelines, dashboards, and ML platforms — redesigned from a raw list into a
trust signal that communicates breadth and community contribution.
STEP 05
Contact / Join Community
Clear forked CTAs route developers to sandbox trial and contributors to
community Slack, while enterprise visitors reach a guided demo request path.
Design Process
From audit to launch
A five-phase process anchored in audience research and conversion thinking — treating the website as a product
with measurable outcomes, not a brochure to be designed and forgotten.
01
Audit
Analytics review, heatmaps, session recordings, and community survey to map existing
pain points.
02
Persona Mapping
Defined three distinct visitor personas — OSS Developer, Data Engineer, and
Enterprise Buyer — each with unique jobs-to-be-done.
03
Content Architecture
Restructured the site IA around outcomes: What problem do you have? → How
OpenMetadata solves it → Proof → Next step.
04
Visual Design
Built a technical-but-approachable visual language: deep dark backgrounds,
data-viz-inspired accents, and clean typography that signals reliability.
05
Launch & Iterate
Shipped with analytics instrumented from day one. Iterated homepage hero copy 3
times based on A/B results within 60 days of launch.