Project Summary and Goal

Working along side a senior UX researcher, I built wireframes, designs and prototypes that were tested and delivered a best in class onsite search experience for the websites of VF Corporation’s portfolio of brands: The North Face, Timberland, Smartwool, Altra, and Vans.

Project Duration

4 Months

Role

Senior User Experience Designer

Tools

Figjam, UserTesting, Figma

KPIs

  • Search in Top Nav / Search Suggestion / SRP

  • Increase findability and content efficiency

  • Make the content easily searchable and clear

  • Account for spelling errors

  • Reduce of clutter

  • Increase visibility and engagement

  • Provide clear paths for users with no results

  • Reduce confusion around what type of landing page they will see

  • More PDP views with Add to Cart clicks

  • Increase conversion

Project Milestones

  1. Heuristic evaluation of the current search experience across all of VF’s brands.

  2. Competitive Analysis of major competitors as well as onsite search experiences considered best in class by Baymard Institute’s standards.

  3. Created wireframes/non-branded search experience in Figma

  4. Tested non-branded search experience with users and iterated

  5. Presented a deck of research and a prototype of the search experience across multiple brands, development resources and analytics stakeholders

  6. Iterated feedback from presentation and the prototype

  7. Skinned and prototyped the search experience across multiple brands (Smartwool + Altra) utilizing and optimizing each of these brand’s design system.

  8. Presented to Smartwool and Altra their optimized onsite search experience.

  9. Delivered all Figma assets to production que for development (slated for Q3 2024)

The End-to-End Design Process

The Research

1) Heuristic Evaluation

Did a deep dive to explore UX problems and brainstormed solutions on Smartwool.com + Altra.com:

Collaborated with the UX Research to identify problems and key areas of opportunity to improve the UI and UX across the user journey:

2) Competitive Benchmark Test

Determined best in class onsite search from current competitors on the web with 16 participants who shop current VF portfolio brands
8 mobile and 8 desktop​
Users explored Patagonia, Lululemon, and Nike:

3) Collected Baymard Institute Best Practices and Academic Research for Onsite Search

Wireframes and Prototyping - Round 1

3) Wireframes

Built a brand agnostic prototype with wireframe in Figma based on the research collected:

See the Figma Designs here.

4) Initial Testing

I created assets for testing the follow areas of onsite search to determine what designs to go with:

  • Tested the viewport of the initial search results that would display on desktop when a user starts typing in a search term:

We ended up going with the medium sized viewports based on this feedback from user testing:

  • Tested search results on mobile to determine if users wanted to see either a grid view vs a list view:

  • Tested driving users to a search results page vs a product landing page when users type in search terms related to product categories

5) Presentation of Optimized Search Prototype

Presented to VF brand stakeholders the optimized search experience and testing results: check out the prototype on Figma.

6) Skinned search experience for Smartwool

7) Skinned search experience for Altra


8) Presented skinned search experiences to Smartwool + Altra brand teams

View Smartwool On-site Search Prototype

9) Delivered Assets to Development

Slotted to be developed in Q3 2024 for Altra Running shoes & Smartwool.

Here’s the projected ROI of this effort:

Altra Running Shoes (aprx 750 million in online sales in 2023) will make approximately 4.2 million more dollars per year from this implementation in annual sales. This is calculated by assuming the orders remain the same year over year. The higher conversion rate of those who engage with search vs not would drive more sales with more users utilizing it - especially on mobile given it’s increase prominence.

Smartwool (aprx 22 million in online sales in 2023) is projected to make 270,000 dollars in revenue more dollars per year from this implementation in annual sales. This is calculated by assuming the orders remain the same year over year. The higher conversion rate of those who engage with search would drive more sales with more users utilizing it. This would be more dependent on the initial search results given Smartwool is VF’s top performing search brand.

The rest of the brand portfolio will increase the company’s revenue by 20+ million dollars (The North Face, Vans, Timberland, Jansport, DIckies) when this search effort is implemented across the other VF brands.