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E-COMMERCE MICROSITE

Marga Javier

UXDI Winter 2014

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Problem

In the age where books seem to take a backseat to screens, how can we make screens work for books?

Rather, how can we make the screens work for a bookstore such as Strand?

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Opportunity: Holiday season

  • USERS/CUSTOMERS: looking for gifts!
  • BUSINESS: Increase sales
  • BRAND: Reinforce Strand’s relevance in the age of digital screens and e-books

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The competition

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What is Strand? What is it all about?

Strand is a NY community bookstore with curated products devotedly selected for its customers.

  • NY institution
  • community-driven
  • literary
  • welcoming
  • devoted
  • classic
  • accessible

The Strand rejects a lot, because unsalable books are deadweight. Whatever arrives has to go out quickly. “Our stock isn’t stale,” Bass says.

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How do we bring the Strand touch to the users behind their screens?

Strand KNOWS its books,

but it also knows its COMMUNITY.

Strand has selected NY locals that are experts in their selected fields as curators of its Holiday Gift Guide housed in an e-commerce microsite.

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From making people card sort items into categories, I realized...

How different people really are. Everyone is multifaceted with varied interests.

But, we all have people we look up to and respect ----

they may be people who are really successful in business whose

vision we believe in,

or someone we feel is artistically-talented

or someone we feel is intellectually knowledgeable about a certain subject

Their opinions carry certain weight.

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From making people card sort items into categories, I realized...

So more than just adding options to filter and find things in a website, guiding them towards a thoughtful and interesting gifting opportunity curated by people they admire was not only more closely aligned with the user goals but towards the goals of the brand as well.

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Who ARE these “EDITORS?”

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Who ARE these

“EDITORS?”

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Who is our customer?

  • Art teacher
  • Single father
  • Looking for a gift for his 12-year-old daughter

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Prototype

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User Flow

Task: John looks for a gift for his daughter

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User Flow 2

Task: Edda finds a gift for her grandson via recommendations from an email Newsletter

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User Flow 3

Task: Dexter gets himself the book The Art of Archie: The Covers

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Site Map

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Iteration 1

Adjusting Current Strand website to simply have a better navigational experience and flow

  • added features such as filters for age groups, price, etc.
  • scrapped this idea to completely redesign the experience - getting into the mindset of someone looking for a gift online

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Iteration 2 - Post Testing

BEFORE

AFTER

“What’s the Empty Cart button there? Isn’t it just the same as Remove?”

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Iteration 3

Removed:

Added:

  • unnecessary step
  • breaks checkout flow

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Next Steps

  1. Card sort “curators” to fall under Categories
  2. Interviews - get sentiments of customers on curator list
  3. More user testing

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Thank you!