Product Design
Quantitative Research
UX Writing
Information Architecture
The results
23% increase in revenue
5% increase in average order value
44% increase in recurring revenue
9% increase in conversion rate
The process
Research: Gather quantitative and qualitative data from new & existing users to validate our hypothesis and goals.
Prototype: Utilizing research results, create various prototypes to test taxonomy, design, and functionality.
User Testing: Test existing navigation in tandem with new prototypes to educate decisions for final product.
Design & Dev: Finalize designs, development strategy and create a plan for future iterations and growth.
Our team was at a turning point with our site. We were about to replatform and redesign, and our taxonomy needed a complete evaluation. Our product offering had grown over the past 6 years, and we wanted a taxonomy that could help support a scalable navigation system.
I strategized, structured, and executed a comprehensive set of research studies to educate our decision-making. Utilizing various methods and user groups, I was able to fully evaluate our users' needs and build out our new guidelines.
Our hypothesis
With a newly defined taxonomy and redesigned navigation, users will easily find what they are looking for, quickly locate new products and best sellers, and have a delightful, familiar experience that they are excited to return to.
Competitive audit
Performing a comprehensive competitive audit was integral to seeing what other users were interacting with around the web. I researched various sized companies with multiple types of product offerings. I discovered we sat somewhere between a larger-scale offering, where the primary navigation becomes gendered (shop by 'Men' or 'Women'), and a smaller-scale offering that could be organized into 5 categories or less.
Conclusion: Dropdown mega menu is the industry standard, but can quickly become crowded and obtrusive. With intelligent categorization that flexes with our offering, and a clean visual & interactive design, we can accomplish a menu system that is unique, intuitive, and highly effective.
Large offering gendered mega menu
Small scale offering
Research
Existing navigation stats
37% of users who arrive at our homepage interact with the navigation
28% interact with nav on the homepage right off the bat
13% of total visitors are clicking a menu item at some point in their session
Top clicked nav items: Boxer briefs, Trunks, Pants, T-shirts
Top clicked categories: Underwear, Tops, Bottoms
Research studies & user groups
It was important to us to get perspectives from various user types. These three groups broadly encompass all of our site’s visitors, including employees who are intimate with our offering, so utilizing them in our studies helps us accumulate as much input as possible.
New Users
9 participants
87% completion rate
Existing Customers
22 participants
51% completion rate
Employees
19 participants
90% completion rate
User Testing
Pattern-finding method to see how users would expect to discover content or functionality.
New users only
Tree Testing
A technique for evaluating the findability of products in a website’s navigation.
New and existing users
Card Sorting
Pattern-finding method to see how users would expect to discover content or functionality.
All user groups
User testing
Purpose: To get candid feedback on our current navigation design and discoverability.
Results: Biggest difficulty was on warm layers, all users easily found long underwear but couldn’t locate the WARMKNIT tops.
Most people easily found swim underwear under swim, but one person got hung up and didn’t notice the “swim” section, and dug through Underwear unable to find something directly targeted to swim.
Most users noticed the Premium Fabrics content block on the homepage, but didn’t know where else to go to discover more about innovative fabrics. One user did end up in actual PDP’s looking at the product descriptions to find out about the fabrics.
Next steps: Validate prototypes and user-test our new navigation.
Card sorting
With various Card Sorting studies, we aimed to narrow down what types of groupings were natural to users, and discover any discrepancies in our current categorization. The following results helped educate our prototypes.
NEW USERS
Underwear
Tops & Bottoms
Casual / Dress Clothes
Socks
Winter Layers
Bags
Accessories
Gift Cards
EXISTING CUSTOMERS
Underwear
Socks
Shirts
Bottoms
Outerwear / Warm Layers
Accessories
Gift Cards
EMPLOYEES
Underwear
Undershirts
Socks
Tops
Bottoms
Outerwear
Accessories
Gift Cards
INTERESTING GROUPINGS: Everyday, Outerwear, Dress Clothes, Activewear
Tree testing
PURPOSE: To fact check our taxonomy structure, and to create a seamless way of discovery for all kinds of users by double-exposing, as well as intelligent categorization for intent-driven navigation.
RESULTS: Out of all the tasks completed by participants, 78% ended up at a "correct" answer, 75% of answers were chosen without backtracking.
Conclusion
High-level, the existing categorization wasn’t totally off. Refining and double-exposing the appropriate products within a more flexible taxonomy will help.
Additionally, people are sorting & shopping by use, occasion, and season, so allowing the ability to explore through those channels only helps people find what they’re looking for faster. Adding this type of navigability to the site will encourage more discovery.
