#The local bevy code#

‍ Using the personas, I was able to create a customer journey assessing the touchpoints at all stages. These reflected two typical users and provided insight to their needs and wants from the site.

Using this and previous user data, I created user personas.

From this, I was able to learn about the goals and motivations of the users, and their requirements for the site. One was a local user who had used the previous site and one further away who hadn't - TBS was looking to expand UK wide this point. ‍ Concurrently, in an informal manner I spoke with stakeholders: the client, one of the bars selling their products and two typical users. I started by reorganising and rebuilding the navigation menu, as seen here. There was however no organisation or IA design for e-commerce and the shop displayed all products in one long list, with no use of filters or categorisation. ‍The site was already built on Squarespace by the client, meaning the bare bones were in place. This would also allow for the addition of would-like-to-have features such as Group Ordering, Favourites/Saved Items list and ApplePay. Given the growth of the business, if I was doing this project again I would insist on using a more robust platform such as Webflow with a Shopify API. It becomes increasingly difficult to provide navigational feedback to the user and increases the interaction cost of browsing the site, potentially leading to lower conversion rates. The main limitation is the lack of navigational features available for e-commerce, for example breadcrumbs, filters & sorting.

#The local bevy code#

What's more, adding custom code for basic design features (e.g overlay on hover) begins to slow the site down. Many simple functionalities you would come to expect from a web builder are missing, requiring custom code at almost every turn - everything requires a workaround in some way. However, I would not recommend using it, unless your site has a very small amount of pages and products. TBS were already using Squarespace and we decided that sticking with it would be most comfortable for them on the commerce side of things. In terms of lessons learned, I would not use Squarespace for a large e-commerce project again. User flows and customer journeys demonstrated flaws in navigation and opportunities to improve these from a UX and marketing perspective. ‍ Doing research for this project highlighted the importance of strong navigation in e-commerce. They expanded the business, opening a new production unit, hiring more staff and, seeing the importance of a strong online presence, hired a social media manager to further promote the brand and make website updates. The data from the most searched items on the site was used to create the ‘best selling’ section on the shop hub, meaning popular choices were very easy to find ‍Īs a result of the redesign, TBS saw an increase in sales, conversion rates and page traffic, and a decrease in abandoned carts. This was something I was also able to simplify. Secondly, the feedback from the users and subsequent user persona/journey highlighted the complexity of the delivery options at checkout. Squarespace does not have a filtering or sorting feature, so I decided this was the best way to help users along the multi-step journey. I created a shop ‘hub’ page with products grouped in to categories and link groups such as ‘cocktails’, ‘wine & beer’ etc.

‍ Design outcomes ‍As mentioned, the products had previously been displayed in one long list with no use of filters or grouping. Again, this helped to identify potential navigational issues and led to the design of a navigational hub type page. I then created user flows to demonstrate the paths a user could take to complete a basic task on the site - buying a product.

This helps to identify potential sticking points in the process of buying, and highlight opportunities to increase conversion, sales and return business. Using the personas, I was able to create a customer journey assessing the touchpoints at all stages. One was a local user who had used the previous site and one further away who hadn't - TBS was looking to expand UK wide this point. Concurrently, in an informal manner I spoke with stakeholders: the client, one of the bars selling their products and two typical users. The site was already built on Squarespace by the client, meaning the bare bones were in place.