Overview

Essic Sport Shop is a local family business that has been selling sporting goods to the community of Gastonia since 1947. Due to safety concerns, many consumers have shifted from in-store visits to online shopping. Essic Sport Shop wants to upgrade its website to an e-commerce platform while maintaining its mission of providing superb customer service.

“How Might We Help Users to Find the Product and Detailed Information, So They Can

Make Informed Purchasing Decisions?”

Research

“ I Like to Shop Online To Save Time ”

To discover user needs during the e-commerce shopping journey. I conducted 4 user interviews with people who have the habit of online shopping.

“ I need a Trustworthy & Intuitive platform to shop Confidently. ”

Mia is the composite character, which I created based on interviews. To fulfill the goal of increasing user acquisition, I focused on users who shop on reseller platforms frequently. Mia was referred to throughout my research and design process to ensure all decisions were made intentionally with reseller platform consumers’ needs in mind.

Establishing a Seamless Shopping Experience

Formulate Navigation

To establish an intuitive online shopping experience. I listed our Essic Sport Inventory and conducted hybrid card sorting tasks remotely to figure out concise navigation. After all the participants completed their tasks, I consolidated all the categories in an excel sheet, converting data into percentage metrics.

Design Solution

Building Navigation

Insights from card sorting and user needs informed my decision for the navigation design. I assigned Sports as the main navigation and Gender as the local navigation while adding supplemental navigations for easy movements between pages.

Site Map - Movement from page-to-page is highlighted in red

System to Install Unity

Following is a design system, I created to maintain consistency throughout my designing process on Sketch.

Color: I picked a soft color palette of a variety of blue and grey. Blue is the color of the year 2020, represents trust and faith. The sky blue is a solid and dependable hue, opening the flow of communication and installing calmness during the user shopping experience. From a psychological standpoint, the neutral combination scheme also gives off curated vibes, which resonates with the company’s mission of providing superb customer service and building a connected community.

Prototype

Result

Purchasing Journey testing

Purpose: Purposes behind the usability testing are to confirm if the navigation flow runs seamlessly as planned, as well as to ensure if the layout composition functions logistically as designed. This testing will also reveal any hidden concerns as first-time website visitors. All the data will assist in iteration development, improving the overall online shopping experience.

Scenario / Task: “Recently, you are experiencing physical and mental fatigue due to a lack of social connections. You decide to start practicing yoga because your friend told you is an excellent natural energy booster. Then you realize you need a pair of yoga pants.  Show me how you would add a pair of grey color and medium size Nike tight to your cart.”

Emphasis Visual Indicators

During usability testing, 80% of participants mentioned they want to identify differences of products on the same interface in a more clear and effective way, so they can spend less time on their purchasing decision. By adding tags like “top seller”, “Latest”, “Only at Essic”, I expect to see a decreasing in product searching time with an increasing in conversion rate.

Reflection

Challenge
The biggest challenge of the individual project is to build a solid research foundation and covert analysis into an intuitive website design with a timeline of fewer than 2 weeks. Although the task was challenging, it was manageable under a structured project plan. I made sure to identify the project phase and refer back to users’ needs so I don’t get lost and stuck on details. With this zoom-out strategy, I was able to deliver the project on time.

Growth
The card sorting resulted in seamless navigation design, informing me the importance of learning the user mentality. Being able to navigate intuitively increases users’ confidence in the brand and can influence the conversion rate. Hence, it is crucial to approach a problem with an “I am not my user” mindset. Another key takeaway was Competitive and Comparative analysis to determine the industry standard. Although UX design is a creative field, it is essential to follow the foundational principles. These rules build the soul of the project, making the design process more organized, concise, and candid.

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