Current State
Now we have time to devote more energy in upping our gift guide game, first we laid out our current design to begin a deep dive. The entry of this section consists of a horizontal scroll carousel featuring all flavor profiles and a designated detail page for each. After a few initial stakeholder interviews, we collected the following feedback:
- Lacking engagement and interactions with the consumers
- Brand identity is missing diversity in consumer preferences
- Consumers are still unclear on the distinctions between the products
- Consumers need a better way to search and locate product details on the site
Competitor Audit
The team immediately sought out to perform gift guide audits across all verticals, particularly in the retail space with a few direct competitors in the mix. With an aim to strengthen our editorial approach and build personable connections with the brand, we screened through inspirations from high-end luxury, DTC e-commerce, and even brick-and-mortar spaces or campaigns that demand similar attention.
Last but not least, we also took in consideration of the previous explorations that may or may not have been implemented by the client, and regrouped as a team to discuss its wins and fails.
Ideation
Concepts began to flow organically as the team hopped into a whiteboard session, the overarching goal was how can we tell the right story while making the “shop” page helpful and intuitive to use?
Design
Gift Guide Home Page
The objective for this landing page is to create a connection with the brand, sell products, and enable users to reach the desired destination.
Taking a user-informed approach, the highest priced product probably shouldn’t take center stage even if it’s a big business need. Instead, pushing something more interactive and interesting, such as themed recommendations or quizzes, higher on the page might drive engagement or emotional responses from users.
The second consideration was to make sure some of the valuable resources that might have limited visibility throughout the site are given the right amount of attention and pathway to access. This became particularly critical not only for supporting way-finding, but also helpful for assessing content type needs in future releases.
Last but not least, my aim was to identify ways to represent these content that are not far off from the existing design pattern, thus mitigating the differences from other parts of the site. Since I was not involved in any previous development, I was very conscious of how the shapes conform to the current system, and how that might scale as our team continues to maintain and enhance the site design.
All Gifts Page
In addition to a new landing page, the team has many big plans for lifting the “shop all” page. Other than building a robust filter and sort feature like many great e-commerce sites do, I was asked to look into other interesting ways that might facilitate the shopping flow.
Some of the appealing features on the market include personalized/chat bot assistance, compare product, and tools for finalizing selection such as checklist or quick cart view.
I began wiring these concepts and drafting how they might play a part in the user flow.
Even though most consumers might be quite familiar with how to carry out online shopping, the user journey on a branded liquor site cannot be compared as such due to the regulatory framework in the U.S for selling alcohol online. So what can we do to enable consumers to find and evaluate what they want while making the experience enjoyable for them?
R1 Wire Reviews
The team conducted some internal reviews (both creative and dev), polished the design thinking, and moved onto further ideating the product detail page, which eventually turned into our primary editorial content.
R2 Wires
Gift Guide Home Page
The consensus was to trim down the homepage and integrate the interactive module that populates tailored results based on the criteria offered, which would minimize the time for consumers to browse and look for the right products within the site.
Product Detail Page
Next is designing the detail pages associated with each of the featured cocktails and holiday spirits. The objective is to keep this page fun and easy to scan through. Drawing inspirations from magazines and fashion editorials, I designed a range of robust modules that can elevate dynamic content while inserting touch points for users to engage with.
All Gifts Page
The team was still ambitious and hopeful in pushing through a lot of the new features proposed, we also wanted to carry over the dynamic content style from the PDP page. However, after some discussions with the development team, the level of effort required was significant and would be highly unrealistic to achieve within our timeline.
Outcome
Collaborating closely, the design and development teams worked hand-in-hand to bring the new website section to life after finalizing the UX thinking. Despite facing some challenges from the client, we embraced them and ultimately delivered a vastly improved shopping experience, aimed at boosting sales and brand awareness. My involvement in the project was highly rewarding as we not only enhanced navigation, scannability, and accessibility but also resolved conflicts with the client, realigned our strategy for scalability, and delivered the project within a tight timeline.
In addition to the various components of the digital experience overhaul our team undertook, our efforts have enabled Patrón to soar from being an outlier to becoming the most frequently cited spirit worldwide, achieving an unparalleled degree of brand awareness (96%), recommendations (79%), and brand loyalty (55%). Our distinctive combination of creativity and storytelling has been instrumental in stimulating worldwide interest, resulting in a 30% boost in overall sales volume, from 2.4 million cases to 3.2 million. These remarkable achievements have established Patrón as a frontrunner in the digital experience realm and a top global brand within the alcohol category.
