A usable, responsive search experience to enhance discovery.
3x Increase in Searches/Session
2x Increase in Conversion via Search
GOAL
Improve search conversion, enhance usability and product discoverability.
MY ROLE
Product Designer & Researcher
OUTCOME
3x increase in searches per session, 2x in search users and conversion via search. Improved usability on mobile devices.
What Wasn’t Working
The prior search experience was more utilitarian and not well built for mobile shoppers which was a larger slice of our web traffic.
The experience also wasn’t up to date on current search patterns in the ecommerce space, missing well known features that are known to aide conversion, enhance usability, and support product discovery.
What I Did
I served as the Lead Designer on the project, outlining key needs to leadership, gathering consensus on scope and iterating on solutions anchored in user research findings. I conducted two moderated usability tests with those in the target market for Erin Condren’s products to drill down on features that were most impactful to the specific demographic of shoppers. In the end, I was able to do the following:
Redesigned search experience to better fit mobile breakpoints, aiding conversion across devices.
Built a trending search feature to surface popular product categories enhancing purchase intent of key products.
Enhanced functionality to better match other leading ecommerce experiences.
Added loading states and proper error path states to give users better visibility into system status.
decisions I made validated by user research
Trending searches function to encourage popular products and categories.
Highlighting direct result matches as user types.
Icon-driven headers to enhance accessibility of scanning search results.
My Process
A comprehensive methodology from initial research through post-launch optimization.
RESEARCH
→ Competitive Audit
→ User Journey Mapping
→ UX Audit of Current Experience
DEFINING ISSUES
→ Sorted and prioritized competitive research findings.
→ Prioritized items to be improved in coordination with my team.
→ Reviewed project requirements with stakeholders to
ensure alignment.
IDEATION & TESTING & VALIDATING
→ Created clickable wireframes in Figma to review with team.
→ Fed mocks into Chat GPT to get feedback.
→ Ran two rounds of moderated, remote usability testing.
Usability Testing
I conducted a remote usability test with Figma prototypes with two target customers. Each participant tested 3 versions of the initial search open experience, followed by the same search results design.
Three versions of initial search open experience
Version one included an initial search state that prioritized planner type, followed by trending searches.
Version two showed trending searches only.
Version three displayed Planner Layout, Size, and Trending Searches.
All variants included a more robust search results page that included number of results, links to relevant product-level pages and individual product results.
Result
Participants ultimately found Version 2 most usable in the context of our products.
Launch & Results
3x
increase in searches per session.
2x
conversion via search
WILL MURPHY
PRODUCT DESIGNER
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