Interior Define – Category Page Redesign

DEC 2018・UX RESEARCH・PROTOTYPING & TESTING・UI DESIGN

Interior Define is a direct-to-consumer startup that specializes in customizable sofas and other furniture.

After a hunch that we were losing customers on category pages (e.g. "Sectionals"), I led some quick research to validate the need for a redesign and benchmark its performance. To find quick wins and longer-term roadmap items, I included:

↳ Benchmarking conversion to details pages, bounce/exit rates, sort & filter use

↳ Auditing our adherence to the Baymard Institute’s UX benchmarks for category pages, and

↳ Conducting usability tests where users shopped ID’s category pages and scored it against competitors

We learned customers were overwhelmed by choice and too many products, frustrated with broken filters, didn’t understand the configurations (ex: Right Chaise Sectional), and needed larger product photos to gauge quality and compare collections.

Notably, they overlooked the customization options and in-person store locations — Interior Define’s main value propositions.

After gaining buy-in, I led an exercise with product and engineering counterparts using the Kano Model to rank fixes and features, and prioritize immediate, near, and long-term requirements:

After several rounds of wireframing, first click-testing, and remote user testing, I led the mobile-first design of our high-fidelity prototype.

I documented all the states and interactions for our off-shore dev team and helped QA the final version to be launched.

Measuring Results

The redesign launched in Spring 2019 after I was no longer there — according to one of the remaining product folks, the redesign significantly decreased bounce/exit rates and led to deeper scrolling and more time on the site.

While I don’t have the exact numbers, a ballpark might be below:

“Sites with mediocre product list usability saw abandonment rates of 67-90%, whereas sites with just a slightly optimized toolset saw only 17-33% abandonments for users trying to find the exact same types of product. This translates into as much as a 4-fold increase in leads.”

–Baymard Institute for E-Commerce UX

Subsequent user testing showed significant improvements in the time it took to find an interesting piece (the visual Configurations filter - ex: Right Sectionals, were particularly helpful) and in their awareness of customization options and in-store locations.

More on my process here:

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More work samples…

Production (Live) • Research & Testing Plan • Requirements Gathering • High- Fidelity Prototypes (Mobile / Desk)