Background

Gesture Shop is an online marketplace for personalized digital gifts. On the website, users can find artists such as songwriters, visual artists, and videographers to create customized gifts. The uniqueness of these gifts is what makes them special, hence why they are called Gestures.

Problem

The first iteration of the Gesture Shop was focused on getting the core functionality down. What it lacked overall, however, was:

• Clear calls to action
• A compelling narrative that explained the marketplace's purpose

This is what the website looked like before my re-design:

Empathize

Personas

I started building empathy with the users of Gesture Shop by reviewing user feedback for the two primary user groups: the customers and the artists. I created two personas to breakdown their attributes, pain points, goals and responsibilities, and motivations.

User Journey Map

I created a user journey map to communicate my understanding of the users and project scope to the client. The user journey map and design opportunities were informed by user feedback, personas, site mapping, heuristic analysis, and client input.

I prioritized opportunities for improvement based on client input and technical feasibility. The client expressed a strong desire to showcase artists' credibility to build trust with users thereby boosting sales. They suggested achieving this by creating a new page that would feature artists and their work. As such, I prioritized making the Home page more compelling, and creating a Meet the Artists page.

Other opportunities were not prioritized list due to technical limitations. For example, due to the platform's backend setup, design changes on the purchase workflow could not be implemented immediately.

Solution Exploration

I began sketching potential solutions for my re-design. While doing this, I focused on improving the call to actions and creating a more compelling narrative.

Improve calls to action

To improve the calls to action, I focused on three main areas:

• Eliminating inefficiencies. Based on the user journey map, I designed a future user flow to identify which inefficiencies could be eliminated from the workflow. Mainly, embedding Gesture personalization forms on the website, instead of requiring users to fill out a Google form.
• Rewriting copy. I noticed that the current copy and call to actions sounded impersonal. I rewrote copy so that it had a friendlier tone and gave a bit more context for call to actions.
• Optimizing section ordering. I felt that it was important to strike the right balance between promoting listings, and explaining what Gesture Shop was. To help decide the optimal section ordering, I did comparative analysis for inspiration. These included Etsy, Fiverr, and Faire.

Create a compelling narrative

Current feedback from user surveys indicated that they were hesitant to purchase a Gesture because they were "not sure if the final product would be worth it", particularly for music Gestures. To address this, I did comparative analysis with other personalized song marketplaces: Songfinch and Songlorious. This led me to focus on two main areas:

• Showcasing past work. Competitors showcased the quality of their offerings by highlighting artists' uniqueness, credibility, and creative process. As such, I focused on displaying past work from artists throughout the website, including audio clips for songwriting Gestures.
• Displaying customer reviews. I noticed that competitors often included customer reviews to demonstrate credibility. Thus, I included a slider section on the Home page featuring positive customer reviews.