Beads of Cambay – eCommerce Website

Simplifying the artisan shopping experience by pairing a tailored product category system with powerful search capabilities.

This case study focuses on the end-to-end design process of an eCommerce website that went live in 2018. The actual website may look different today. 
🎯 Our Mission
How might we make it easy and delightful to find the perfect gem?
Beads of Cambay is home to thousands of gems and beads from all over the world. Artists and entrepreneurs visit the store to buy supplies for jewelry. 
We set out to understand how artists look for supplies and tailor an online shopping experience around them.
More key questions...
• What motivations or mindsets are artists coming into the store with?
• What are the key parameters that customers search by?
• How could we organize thousands of different SKUs into something that makes sense?

This goes on and on.

🙋🏻‍♂️ My Role
Designer
I worked with a Project Manager and 2 Engineers. 
🔍 Research
We interviewed repeat customers, reviewed historical sales patterns, and analyzed behavior flow data from Google Analytics.
To understand how people interacted with the existing store, we pursued qualitative and quantitative methods of research. Talking to their existing customers gave the team insight into the motivations of our users, and parsing through sales and behavior flow data allowed us to understand customer behavior on a macro level.
💡 Key Findings
Two key personas that we needed to solve for were:
• Those who know exactly what they're looking for.
• Those who are browsing hoping to stumble into a great piece.
Other insights:
• Customers who came to browse still needed a guided experience. Customers who landed on the "view all products" converted at a measurably lower rate than those who had a more predictable experience.
• Beads of Cambay had a reputation with its clients. They trusted the company's expertise and inventory.
• Users who knew exactly what they were looking for often lacked the exact words to type into the search box. Keywords like "faceted", "asscher", and "pampel" that were often part of the product names were not known by most customers. 

📐 Prototypes & Solutions
We went through 3 feedback loops that addressed our findings. Here are some noteworthy solutions that made it through the ringer:

We developed collections based on different cohorts of shoppers. Some were always looking for one-of-a-kind gems, while others were strictly bargain hunters. Others still really respected the Beads of Cambay brand, so we created collections that were expertly curated by their staff.

We developed custom illustrations to add much needed context to the category pages.

We developed a custom color-picker that allowed users to define a range of colors. While users can choose from the predefined colors seen in the image prior to this one, users who knew exactly what they were looking for needed more granular control. The picker would come with an animated GIF when users first interacted with it.

🎨 Visual Language
The guiding principles for the visual language were: Artsy, chic, and classy.
📝 Validation
We conducted usability tests and got feedback from existing customers.
• We learned that a thrifty cohort often spent time looking for coupons off-site, often leading to a drop-off during checkout.
• Available quantity was an extremely important for some shoppers. They did not want to commit to a gem type that could potentially run out of stock before they can finish their projects.

Whenever promotions were active, we added a feature that will automatically apply a coupon code to a customer's cart. 

We added an explicit count of each SKU to the product pages.

✅ Final Deliverable
After the initial launch, we saw positive responses from existing customers. The new experience was more organized and provided more control and transparency.

Homepage

Custom mega menus

Order confirmation page

🙇🏻‍♂️ Thank you! By the way, I love to make friends!

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