Z Gallerie – Journey to Profitability
I was involved in building the product end-to-end from definition all the way to development. I have practiced Human-centered design and Agile methodologies and worked cross-functionally with different senior stakeholders.
Role: UX Designer
Timeline: 3 months
Responsibilities: UX Research, UI design, Stakeholder Management
UX Design
Web Design
UI Development
The Problem
Z Gallerie used to focus more on serving their customers through their brick and mortar stores. It's website was created to serve more of its editorial needs rather than e-commerce and this approach made it lose its customers over the internet.
Business Objective
In 2019, the company strategized to lean more aggressively towards e-commerce and make the company once more profitable in a matter of one year.
To transition successfully, we had to make a number of changes to Z Gallerie's website such as improving the user experience, increasing the visibility of its products, building engagement and streamlining the checkout process.
Process
Dissecting the Old Experience
I conducted a variety of user research methods to gather insights and inform the design of these features.
Surveys & In-depth Interviews
I conducted surveys from 16 participants in order to identify the current painpoints of ZG customers and gather feedback on website's usability, functionality and appeal. This helped me understand where the improvements are needed and what to prioritize.
Usabilty Testing & Other Research Methods
To test the usability of the current desktop and mobile website, I conducted monitored usability testing and tasked the participants such as finding products and checking out.
I also analyzed data from website analytics such as page views, bounce-rates, heat-maps, and conversion rates, to understand how users were interacting with the site and identify opportunities for improvement.
User Persona
A persona was built based on the data collected to help drive decision making and keep the product focused on solving users pain points, frustrations, and goals.
Painpoints
Unusable mobile navigation and confusing menus.
Unusable mobile navigation and confusing menus.
Poor legibility of typography on both desktop and mobile.
Too much information on product pages that causes cognitive overload.
Plan of Action
Research validated the pain points discovered from the initial evaluation of Z Gallerie's offering. With 4 months timeframe, the design, marketing and product team discuss the potential solutions. These were the top priority.
Design a responsive website that scales across multiple devices
Redesigned the product pages to increase comprehension and improve overall usability.
Create inner pages for the new design services page. Redesign the inspiration pages alongside with the catalog with the goal of increasing the visibility of these pages.
Reorganize the IA to enhance discoverability, search, and overall user experience when browsing products. Additionally, the website will have to switch to a different payment gateway that does not redirect to another site to increase customer trust when they check-out.
From Sketches to Prototypes
With the data gathered, I started sketching out early layouts as a base for the initial wireframe.
