Stephanie Weber
Experience Designer
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Ecommerce Replatform: Envisioning

In the Envisioning phase, I worked to understand all existing functionality that would need to be carried over to the new platform, enhancements to existing functionality, and new functionality. I presented this information to product owners and stakeholders so we could create a strategy for achieving the work.

 

Ecommerce Replatform: The Envisioning Phase

The Project Overview

In Spring of 2018, Caleres was preparing for a platform migration. The plan was to migrate all existing functionality from 14 e-commerce websites, enable new functionality, and recreate 2 internal product maintenance applications into a single platform. The business goal was to give site authors freedom to maintain their websites as their brand saw fit. Before the project could start, as the Lead UX Designer on the project, I was responsible for creating the scope of work.

 

The process

I audited the 14 websites that would be transferred to the new platform and 2 product maintenance applications that the retail and e-commerce teams use so the team could understand the breadth of work involved to create parity. I was able to identify 494 existing features.

After the initial audit, I conducted user interviews with content authors and merchandisers to learn about enhancements and new features that would improve the team’s process for running the day-to-day of an e-commerce site. We came up with 147 enhancements and 58 new features.

I sorted the audit findings into similar buckets (ex. Cart, Checkout, Product, Admin., Promotions, etc.). It was helpful to see similar features bucketed together. One challenge was to keep a wholistic view on the project because so many features are closely tied but were sorted into different buckets.

I created the audit in Excel so we could quickly compare if a site currently had a certain type of functionality.

I created the audit in Excel so we could quickly compare if a site currently had a certain type of functionality.

 

The Problem

In the end, we distilled our research into one problem to focus on:

How might we build an e-commerce platform that allows for simplistic user conversions and site author freedom?

 
Every Post-It represents a different feature. The orange Post-Its are larger features and the yellow Post-Its are the smaller pieces of the larger feature.

Every Post-It represents a different feature. The orange Post-Its are larger features and the yellow Post-Its are the smaller pieces of the larger feature.

The Solution

The Product Owners used this feature matrix to label which features were considered MVP (minimum value product) and which could be saved for after the initial launch. We went through multiple rounds of labeling and prioritizing because every team member came from a different part of the company and therefore had a different stake in the game.

 

The outcome

  • Design and development began in September 2018. The first 3 websites launched one year later in October 2019 with around 100 components. The remaining sites were launched over the following year with another 100 components.

  • Page views increased by 60% and time on site has also increased

  • Onsite searches doubled year over year (8.4% vs 4.9%)

  • Overall conversion has increased from around 2% to 3% across multiple sites

  • Before our platform change, only our iOS and Android app had Apple Pay and Google Pay. We extended these payment methods to all websites and 4-6% of each sites checkouts are now through Apple Pay.

I led the solution design for the site architecture. I helped design more than 100 components that each brand could reconfigure in a way that tells their brand’s story best. This was the base template for every site.

I led the solution design for the site architecture. I helped design more than 100 components that each brand could reconfigure in a way that tells their brand’s story best. This was the base template for every site.