OVERVIEW
This project is focused on redesigning Zara’s website to build a quality shopping experience for fashion-forward millennials and gen-z. Zara is considered one of the topmost valuable brands in today's fashion yet many people report that the in-store shopping experience is 10xs better than the online shopping experience.
ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES
UX/UI Designer
Content Strategist
Tools Used : Figma, Asana, Miro
Zara is one of the biggest international fashion companies with nearly 3,000 stores in 96 countries. Zara’s brand value is an estimated $14.7 billion, and the fast fashion retail giant generated $21.9 billion in sales as of June 27, 2020. Zara operates its stores and online platforms under four core values: beauty, clarity, functionality and sustainability.
December 2021
PROBLEM
With such a high reputation and with the increase of retail shoppers due to the pandemic not only was the navigation difficult but there were opportunities to condense the information architecture and increase online customers.
Lack of reviews, unrealistic images and the UI's disorganization are the main problems of the online shopping experience. Balancing the aesthetics and practicality of the website would provide online shoppers, a convenient shopping experience.
Homepage Annotations
Navigation Annotations
Product Page Annotations
Real fedback from Instagram
RESEARCH
Using a research plan the key is to identify user pains and prove or disprove our assumptions. While exploring Zara as a team, there is potential design ideas with the navigation and homepage. However, I knew it would not get far without insight from Zara's target audience-online shoppers. I selected 13 users to participate in an interview and perform user tasks on Zara's original website.
Research Types: 1–1 Interviews, via Zoom
Total Participants: 13 Total (6 Men, 7 Women)
Age Groups: 18–30 years old (All Millennials)
Below are some of the key takeaways
Participants quotes describing what they believe is difficult about Zara's website.
We also decided to research and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of direct and in-direct competitors to the Zara site.
Below are some of the key takeaways
Pixie market:
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Modern aesthetic for it's website
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Only sells clothing to women
Madewell:
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Call to action buttons stand out
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Bad shipping, poor return policy, poor customer service
Lush:
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Vegan beauty products are tailored to meet the needs of different ethnicities
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Eccentric energetic vibe
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
Kyra is a social media manager in Atlanta. Since the start of the pandemic, she’d been working remotely and shopping fashion statement pieces remotely. She depends on detailed reviews and realistic images when shopping online because some well-known fashion brands have disappointed her with products that were well her expectations.
After compiling and analyzing data, the user persona of Kyra Walker was created.
THE GAME PLAN
As identified above, there are two areas in which can help give Zara's website users a more personalized shopping experience. Balancing its aesthetics and practicality.
All elements that needed to be included in the new information architecture for the re-design is shown below A card sort was conducted and as a team, a single card sort was agreed upon to lay the groundwork for designing our new website.
Card Sorting
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Style Guide
Sleek and minimalistic while still keeping a high fashion aesthetic. The colors are neutral,
timeless and could go with any and all collections.
Sketched Wireframes
homepage, discounts, reviews, collections, customer service are the features that were incorporated in each of the team sketches.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Simplified Homepage
Product page/Reviews section
USER TEST FEEDBACK
The feedback received was overall very warm. The users felt that the website was fresh, honest, and easy on the eyes. Many users informed us that they primarily shop on their phones so we ensured that viewing the website on mobile was just as easy and simple to navigate as desktop.
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
IN THE FUTURE
In the future, we hope to focus on making returns easy for online shoppers through a paperless return system. The paperless return system would utilize QR codes sent to the customer’s email and easily scannable off a phone, all for free. We would test to see if free returns would be a cost effective way to build trust with online shoppers.