Terramedus
terramedus Akademie für Gesundheit is a German education provider offering certified training and further education in health, wellness, therapy, prevention, sport and relaxation. With a broad portfolio of on-site and digital courses across more than 20 locations, terramedus supports diverse career paths in holistic health and personal development.
My core responsibility was conducting user research, developing personas, restructuring the sitemap, and optimizing user journeys through wireframing and UI design to improve clarity and course discoverability.
Fields
User Research, Persona Creation, User Journey Optimisation
Team
AHOII Networking
01
User Research
Background and Challenge
terramedus offers a wide range of educational formats and subject areas, from massage therapy and alternative healing practices to yoga instruction and personal training. This diversity results in a broad and heterogeneous target audience with varying ages, professional backgrounds, expectations and time resources. Some users seek full career changes, while others look for short certifications or follow-up courses. The challenge was to understand these different motivations and barriers and to translate them into a clear digital strategy. Without a structured understanding of core user groups, the website risked addressing everyone equally, but no one effectively.
Approach
We began by identifying and clustering the most relevant target groups based on motivations, constraints and educational goals. This research formed the foundation for persona development, which guided all further structural and UX decisions.
Identify core target groups and their professional or personal backgrounds
Analyse age ranges, time availability and learning preferences
Explore objections that previously prevented course enrolment
Define preferred course formats and interest in follow-up qualifications
Map discovery channels and communication touchpoints
The resulting personas created a shared understanding of user needs across the project. They helped ensure that course structures, navigation and messaging aligned with real-life situations rather than assumptions. This user-centered foundation became essential for rebuilding the sitemap and optimising the overall user journey.
02
Sitemap and User Journey
Background and Challenge
Although terramedus already had an established website, the existing structure did not reflect the diversity of the course portfolio and led to a tedious navigation through the page. Content was often duplicated across unnecessary parent pages, making navigation complex and time-consuming. Users had to click through multiple layers to reach relevant course details or booking pages. There was no single overview of all available courses and smaller, filtered lists were scattered across the site. User research also revealed that many participants choose courses based on the instructor, yet the website did not support this behaviour. The challenge was to simplify navigation while accommodating multiple user entry points.Approach
The sitemap was restructured around a central, filterable course overview that adapts to different user needs and entry scenarios. This approach reduced complexity while increasing flexibility.
Create one central course list containing all available courses.
Introduce filters for location, format, field specialization, teacher and time period.
Place pre-filtered course lists on pages dedicated to locations, teachers and areas of specialization.
Reduce unnecessary parent pages and duplicated content while ensuring the page’s SEO optimisation .
Visualise the optimised user journey with a maximum of three clicks to checkout.
The new sitemap significantly improves navigationability across the pages and reduces cognitive load. Users can now access relevant courses faster, regardless of whether they start by location, topic, or instructor. The streamlined structure supports diverse user journeys while remaining scalable for future course expansions, resulting in a clearer, more efficient learning platform.
