INTERIOR DEFINE・2018
Redesigning Navigation & IA to Boost In-store Traffic and Locations Page Visits
The redesign boosted Location page views by 9X and significantly increased booked appointments.
The redesign increased individual Location page views by ~600-900%
Interior Define is a D2C startup specializing in customizable sofas.
I led the strategy, research, testing, and visual design for Interior Define's first major UX project: a complete redesign of the information architecture (IA), including top- and bottom-navition and menus.
The existing nav (above) had overlapping categories and no mention of the in-store locations
The IA buried some of the most important revenue-driving pages.
As the business grew, the nav suffered from overstuffed categories, vague naming, and buried pages like Locations, Book an Appointment, and Complimentary Design Advice. Three goals informed my design strategy— I aimed to:
Reduce clicks to common destinations.
Surface product categories (e.g. Sofas vs. Shop now).
Highlight pages driving conversion.
Using in-person and online card sorting to inform a more intuitive IA
With the bones of a new IA from card sorting, I used tree testing to refine category naming and test different versions. We saw that Customers expected products grouped by room and often confused sectionals with sofas.
“But what’s a Guideshop?”
We also learned that customers didn’t understand the term Guideshops (in-store locations)— a significant finding since most customers purchase in person vs online.
Driving traffic to the Book an appointment links became the focus while reorganizing the IA
Refining even further, when testing wireframes, customers understood “Locations” before “Visit us” and noticed it more to the right side of logo.
Introducing more visual hierarchy, the simpler version (right) outperformed the rest
Guideshops were core to the brand and held sentimental value with the founder/CEO.
To build buy-in, I included him and a cross-functional team in the research findings and presented first-click results to quantify the new navigation compared to the previous one.
Using “Locations” for the nav link and “Guideshop locations” in the menu to stay brand aligned
Surfacing Living, Dining, & Bedroom vs “Shop now”, swipeable nav on mobile
For customers to complete the most important tasks on the site, e.g., Shop for a sectional, find a store, contact support, find the return policy, etc,
Speed improved and task success increased from 37% to 87% (mobile) and 53% to 90% (desktop)
Adding product images when customers confused Sectionals with Sofas
Highlighting our live chat to offer guidance and generate inbound leads
Surfacing individual location pages to drive traffic and help with SEO
By prioritizing Locations, I increased traffic to individual Locations pages by ~600-900%.
More importantly, it boosted in-store appointments — a huge win, as Interior Define’s customers prefer in-store purchases, where conversion rates reach ~60%.
The project earned our two-person design team buy-in from across the org and laid the groundwork for our research and testing process going forward. More on my process here: