Shoplocal.com
Overview
This was a project for which I was the lead designer during my time at G/O Digital, the digital marketing arm of Gannett Inc. Shoplocal.com, a consumer facing website which showcases weekly circular data for major national retailers, was in dire need of a facelift. Armed with lots of valuable local deal data, we decided to embark on the journey of offering better value to the local deal hunters we served.
My Role
Facilitated research sessions & helped to identify product goals
Contextual inquiry with stakeholders & subject matter experts
Created wireframes, designs workflows & visual design
Front-end coding of responsive layout
Facilitated usability testing sessions
User Research
We kicked off the project by involving several teams and outlining the product goals with key stakeholders. We then dove into a detailed business, metric and revenue analysis on the old site and did a competitive analysis on other similar products in the marketplace.
Next we performed a comprehensive content inventory, contextual interviews and in-person interviews watching shoppers’ behavior while purchasing products online. Armed with all of these findings, we were able to decide on key use cases, functionality and features that would make up our minimum viable product.
From there I identified a few personas, design patterns, and then iterated constantly through wireframes and prototypes.
In-person interviews with local deal hunters telling us about how they shop
Initial ideas we gathered from all of our stakeholders to help inform the design.
Design Solution
We went through several design iterations over the course of this project. Many were built by myself in HTML or in interactive Keynote presentations. Testing was mostly done with some of the same participants who helped us in our contextual inquiry, SMEs and stakeholders.
Our efforts resulted in more organic traffic, higher banner impressions, and increase in revenue generated from Shoplocal.com. The organization was thrilled with the end product and I learned some valuable lessons through the process!
The landing screen featuring most viewed deals and most viewed circulars
Visitors could browse their deals by categories or search for specific products or store events
The weekly circular browsing experience, allowing visitors to browse the pages online
The redesign boasted some lightweight new technologies, and was highly responsive and mobile friendly.
Conclusion
After the successful release of the new site, we used Google Analytics to measure how the new design had affected its performance, and collected feedback from a new feedback tab feature. We used the information we gathered from this to fuel what to prioritize in subsequent releases.