Case study TLDR:

🧐 Context on Upgrade

Upgrade Boutique is a first of it's kind marketplace that provides a streamlined eCommerce experience to the high end wig industry, a space that had primarily operated through social media dms.

Upgrade offers the benefit of its large marketing reach to the stylists, while allowing customers to shop from a range of vetted stylists in one centralized platform.

🏔️ The Challenge

To shift customer focus from the "Collection," which consisted of wigs created by in-house stylists, to the "Marketplace," an experience that allowed customers to buy from outside stylists who had uploaded their own wigs to the platform.
To understand why a number of stylists were signing up for the platform, but not uploading any products.

🤓 My Role(s)

Principal Product Designer

User Researcher

🖌️ Design Tools

🥜 Process in a nutshell

Design thinking & alignment workshop to understand business model, core problems and the affected user demographics.
Research sprint that included audits, user interviews, surveys, and Hotjar recording analysis.
Research synthesis. Design strategy development in alignment with client goals.
Design solutions into the platform, working with and improving existing design elements.
Make final iterations based on client feedback and handoff to development team.

🦄 What made this project unique?

Designing for a marketplace is always unique in the fact that there are at least two core user groups with their own unique problems that need to be accounted for simultaneously.
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In this case there was significant segmentation within one of the user groups (stylists) and we had to prioritize which subgroup to solve for. Our strategy was driven by the fact that one subgroup had greater alignment with the core problem than the others, so we chose to focus our efforts where they'd deliver the most direct results.

🏆 Outcomes & Results

60% increased traffic to the marketplace.
New streamlined shopping index page that removed confusion around where to shop.
An overhauled stylist dashboard that emphasized usability and familiarity.
New customization flow that allows for communication between customers and the stylists during a transaction.

A deeper look at my process:

🔬 Discovery

Before jumping into research it was important to understand the different user personas that interacted with the Upgrade platform

As I was tasked with discovering the "why" for two very different questions, I knew my approach had to cast a wide net. I used the following techniques which all led to valuable insights.

Heuristic Analysis (Stylist A & B)

A tricky to use stylist dashboard could be adding to the confusion around how to best use the platform. As it stood, there was a lot of valuable information, but it was organized poorly.

Hotjar Recordings (Customer)

First time shoppers weren't sure where to start so they just go to the first thing they see, which happened to be "create a wig." If an emphasis on the Marketplace was to be achieved, that should be the first section on the homepage.

Survey (Stylist B)

Marketplace stylists who had not uploaded wigs said that there was nothing preventing them from doing so, those same stylists said they would recommend Upgrade. This told us that not uploading is on the stylist and not a result of something Upgrade did.

User Interviews (A & B, Customer)

I spoke with two group A stylists, three group B stylists, and two customers. The insights were greatly varied as you can see below.

I don't expect most people to read much of the affinity map above, I felt it important to show. There's a lot of feedback there, so sorting through it to uncover trends pertaining to the questions I was trying to answer was instrumental.

Trends by User Type

Design Direction

Considering all the research, we decided the best approach would be to focus on the group B stylists and the customers, as the group A stylists often required a white label approach to best suite their unique requests. Our design direction for each demographic was as follows:

Group B Stylists

To nurture stylist engagement on the platform:

Overhaul the stylist dashboard to create a more intuitive experience
Design a customization flow for marketplace wigs
Allow for additional photo/video uploads for individual wigs

Customers

To generate more customer engagement in the marketplace:

Combine the "Collection" and the "Marketplace" into a singular shopping experience
Design a favorite feature to help customers narrow their choices
Remove endless scroll on wig index pages and implement pagination

🎨 Design

Customer solution

For the customer, when they arrived at at the Upgrade homepage, they would no longer see the Collection and the Marketplace, but one "Pre-Styled Wigs" shopping category. The previous Collection items would be differentiated within this new index page with badges. Customers could now also select items as favorites and pagination was implemented to reduce cognitive load and make decision making easier.

Stylist solution

For the stylists, the overhauled dashboard offered digestible metrics at a glance as well as familiar dashboard navigation.

Wig customization solution

The option to customize marketplace wigs was sought after by both stylists and customers. I designed an option for a customization request to be made while ordering the wig, as well as a request screen to be reviewed and accepted or declined by the stylist.

📈 Results & Next Steps

Over the course of four weeks I delivered validated solutions to Upgrade for each of the specific user problems I was tasked with solving. The key parts of those solutions being:

60% improved engagement with the marketplace by creating a streamlined shopping index page that removed confusion around where to shop.
An overhauled stylist dashboard that emphasized usability and familiarity.
A customization flow to allow more wig design freedom in the marketplace.

If I had more time, I would have loved to do a round of usability testing with the targeted demographics.

Additionally, there was ample room for design improvements for the group A stylists who were not ultimately included in these solutions.