DutchCrafters Shop the Look Redesign

The Problem

In 2021, my manager Debra identified a section of our website that was unhelpful to customers and damaging to our reputation. This section, titled Shop the Look, was identified in a content audit by a contractor as providing "thin content." This thin content was actively harmful to our reputation to Search Engines.

We also identified that just 21% of the pages in this section displayed all the content they should. The other 79% of pages were missing at least one piece of content that was supposed to be linked to the page. This was one of several factors that created a poor user experience.

The Process

In late 2021, I was invited to lead an inter-team task force to develop a recommendation to update and improve the Shop the Look section of dutchcrafters.com. Our task force consisted of 7 people from 4 teams and we were given 4 months to complete our work.

My task force attacked the problem using the first three phases of the Design Thinking framework, a popular framework in UX Design. ​

1. Empathize​
2. Define​
3. Ideate​
4. Prototype​
5. Test​

Through the Empathize and Define stages, we identified the problems and frustrations of users, defining the following Problem Statement and provided data to back up the conclusions:

Despite its large, attractive photos and creative concept, the Shop the Look tool presently offers a very poor user experience, no SEO value, and no evidence that it can convert customers efficiently. As long as the Shop the Look system relies on the Buy as Shown tool, the platform will only offer limited product selections as Category Managers are able to maintain it. ​

Finally, we concluded the bulk of our work by meeting for an all-afternoon design sprint to develop a recommendation.

Results

In a workplace that often allows projects like this to drag out much longer than necessary and fails to work well across teams, we proved that problems can be solved with greater efficiency. We concluded our recommendation in just over a month, less than half the time permitted, and with buy-in from every relevant team in the company.

Our recommendation will have to be approved and then built out and implemented by other teams, so it's far too early to see results from the change. However, the process was strong and everybody felt heard and included in the decision-making. Several members of the Task Force voiced support for the Design Thinking framework I employed to approach the problem and particularly the intensive, full-afternoon Design Sprint to develop a solution. Some called it "fun" and one member said the following after the meeting:

We should really do this type of process to solve problems a lot more around here.

The following graphics show before-and-after images: the previous webpages followed by the new page mockups.