The Carle
"How do we provide picture book art collectors with a familiar and consistent e-commerce experience?"
Backstory
The Carle's mission is to instill a love of art and reading through picture books. It had been several years since their site's last redesign so stakeholders had a wishlist of changes. Of these, improving their e-commerce experience was a top priority, We were able to conduct in-depth user research on this project, where we found that a better shopping experience was also top of mind for users, so this is where we focused.
Hard To Find Items
The Carle stocked more autographed copies and special editions of picture books than any other online retailer.
Their product inventory, mission, and credibility in that world attracted art collectors and children's literacy advocates.
Their picture book collections evoked nostalgia, instilled a sense of responsibility in their children, and were the cornerstones in their parent/child bonding time.
The Problem
Users had to frequently call into the gift shop for help finding items on the site or to place phone orders. We audited the site and found it was due to it's confusing information architecture, i.e. non-intuitive navigation, and a lack of standard, e-commerce design patterns.
Previous site
Fixing The Information Architecture
The first step in improving the shopping experience was to do an architectual overhaul of the product categories and navigation design.
Unfamiliar top navigation
Random authors' names in the shop's category list, nothing significant when you click on them.
An exchange of money takes place with these things, however, they're not tangible products and belong elsewhere.
After auditing the previous site, I conducted a card sorting exercise to help restructure the top navigation and product categories. Because there were so many categories within the e-shop alone, we had decided to have it open in a separate browser window.
The new navigation patterns tested well overall. We only made one change...to one of the category titles to increase usability.
Concepts for Collectors and Fans
Caterpillar
Caterpillar offers a modern, dynamic, e-commerce experience in a blog-style layout. The goal of this concept is to establish The Carle as a leading virtual resource for picture book art products and information.
The homepage features genre news like exhibits, author tours, and book-inspired movies.
The site provides smart suggestions and relevant product links in blog posts.
Artist info for serious fans who can't visit the physical museum.
Users loved the concept, but it was a bit too transformative for stakeholders, mainly because they refused to feature events that didn't take place at The Carle. It was our idea that doing so could establish The Carle as a centralized resource for everything picture book art-related, make the landscape more collaborative, draw more attention to the genre, and help further their mission. However, they did not want to extend the olive branch. Later, we found a more moderate way to give users the genre-related informational resources they desired.
Umbrella
Umbrella is a multi-user portal with separate profiles for family members and offers personalized product suggestions based on individuals' needs. The goal of this concept is to help increase child development by pinpointing which resources they would benefit from the most.
Similar to Netflix, there are separate avatars for each profile.
Users select interests to trigger product selections.
Personalized suggestions to facilitate learning and development.
We loved this concept and thought it could really be effective at getting users the resources they needed to help aid their children's development. However, users had concerns about putting their children's information on The Carle's site and thought it was overkill for what they needed. We nixed this concept but made sure our final designs enabled users to easily find age-appropriate resources by proper categorization, navigation and the use of a filter which are things that weren't available previously.
The Exit
The Exit is an item-personalization feature that allows users to have their book purchases inscribed and wrapped with personalized packing. The goal of this concept is to increase the sentimental value of picture books to promote collecting thereby instilling a deeper appreciation of the genre.
Users can select the option on the view cart screen.
Users can choose the location of their transcription.
Increasing Usability
We initially titled the "Author/Illustrator Info" category "Artist Info". However, that title confused users looking for author info because they assumed "Artist" meant illustrator. We made the title more specific and decreased task completion time during the next round of user testing.
Despite having a filter, users still tended to scroll through the search results for their items. As a result, we included directions at the top of the page to direct them to the filter. During testing, this copy proved effective, triggered filter usage, and helped users find items quicker.
Future Recommendations
Here are our suggestions for The Carle...
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Monitor the number of customer service calls to verify that our designs led to a decrease in volume
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Work towards digitizing their collections and exhibits to offer a virtual experience as rich as an in-person one
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Consider implementing a collaborative element as laid out in the Caterpillar concept as a way to bring more attention to the genre and the museum
Personal Reflection
I learned a lot on this project about managing bias when deciding on a design direction. With so many divergent stakeholder goals and The Carle being a nonprofit, my team couldn't come to consensus on whether we should focus on the e-commerce experience or something seemingly more altruistic like virtual learning resources.
Eventually, our creative director made the call to focus on e-commerce. With me being a business-minded designer, I pushed for e-commerce from the start. I understood it was a major fire for our users and the museum. Since our redesign strengthened The Carle from a business standpoint, we helped them continue their mission.