Responsive Ecommerce Site
My Role: Design, Research, Development Lead
oVertone Haircare is a line of color depositing conditioners designed for consumer use at home to prevent colored hair from fading. It is a primarily ecommerce based business, with 99% of their business coming from their website. I was tasked with redesigning their website experience.
As the sole UX designer and front-end developer for this project, I wore many hats. I led user research activities such as user interviews and stakeholder interviews. I oversaw front-end web development for the redesigned site. The site was successfully launched on February 2018.
I interviewed the various stakeholders of this project including the CEO, Marketing Director, and Client Services Director in order to understand the business needs (Sell more conditioner!) and understand the frustrations of oVertone customers, as conveyed to the Client Services team (Which product is right for my hair? Why doesn't this product appear on my unbleached dark brown/black hair?!).
I spoke to 6 users who already had colored hair or were considering it. I interviewed both existing oVertone customers and not-yet-oVertone-customers.
Existing oVertone customers did not call out any issues with the website, other than minor bugs. They were already familiar with the products and knew what to buy. They reported that the purchasing process was pretty easy and straightforward.
For new, potential oVertone users, however, it was a completely different story. They often left the site because they couldn't figure out what the product was, as it was not clear from the home page, and which product was right for their hair.
If they did stick around, they often bought the wrong product since they didn't have the information they needed, hated the product since it didn't work, and never bought from oVertone again. Some users did ask customer service reps via chat or email for help as a workaround and those users had a higher chance of being repeat customers.
During user interviews, I noticed that the information the users were looking for was often on the website, but it was not very visible and so buried in the layout that users often missed it.
The previous version of oVertone's website suffered from numerous problems. It had an abysmal conversion rate. New users unfamiliar with the product did not know what the product was or how to buy the right product for their needs. In fact, the Marketing team created a landing page with more information about the products, which had a higher conversion rate than the home page.
Based on the discovery work, our goal for the redesign was to create a website that would cater to both returning and new oVertone customers and avoid frustrating the user while navigating the website and after making a purchase.
I worked closely with the creative team to align the redesigned site with the oVertone brand. I created a new design system to give a sense of cohesion throughout the site. Since the products were quite colorful, I chose very neutral colors for the styles and components to focus the attention on the products and the photography.
The website was developed on the Shopify platform and successfully launched on February 2018.
