COMUNITYmade is a creator of premium shoes handcrafted in Los Angeles.
For every pair of shoes sold, they donate to a charitable organization in the LA community. This case study explores why the shoe retailer was converting less than 1% of their online traffic despite a successful Kickstarter campaign.
For three weeks, I functioned as a UX Designer in addition to a dedicated researcher and a shoe aficionado.
Reach 2% online shopper conversion (starting at 0.17%)
• No one on our team was familiar with the client's CMS (Shopify)
• There was scope creep within the first week
• We lost a teammate halfway through the project
We began with a tour of the brick and mortar store to better understand our client and observe customers. COMUNITYmade proudly displayed their handmade shoes in a clean and inviting environment. When making a purchase, customers were asked to drop a colored marble in a charity bowl of their choice. There were three bowls with small cards describing each charity, but usually an emplyee quickly explained the choices:
• Support the arts
• Provide education
• End homelessness
While most in-store customers indicated that they enjoyed the ritualistic contribution, online customers battled confusion and frustration. We discovered this by conducting usability tests with shoppers comfortable buying shoes online.
Frustration was expressed over gift cards having locked amounts, lack of media on product detail pages, and the immediate discount popup that no one read. While users had many feelings about the website, one theme prevailed above the others: charity selection was not clear.
"These are... buttons?"
"What? Why did I just get denied? Select a charity... what?"
"Wait, who pays the $10 (to the charity)?"
"Just pick a charity for me! I wanna feel good, but I don't want to put in the effort... otherwise I would just go donate somewhere else ya know?"
"I don't understand what these charities do. Don't really know about Downtown LA. I guess that's nice?"
It looked like we found the biggest problem right out of the gate, but we also analyzed competitors to see if there were any other opportunities. That's when the client mentioned they'd also like to see layouts that encouraged customization of their shoes. We discussed if this feature was truly responsible for lack of sales and decided it would come secondary to resolving the friction around charity selection.
(While we did have a team member volunteer to take on the customization aspect, I was not heavily involved.)
Aside from usability studies, we also investigated online traffic using Google Analytics. In the previous two months, the site had 19,335 total sessions with more than half lasting less than 10 seconds. Additionally, 84.2% of sessions were from mobile devices. We also discovered the client was utilizing Facebook advertising. Social media alone equated 73% of traffic with 95% of Facebook traffic visiting the website for an average of 37 seconds.
The targeted audience was much younger with less disposable income the users we identified through our research. We suggested to the client that a change in marketing strategy would increase the conversion rate.
We returned to the most pressing friction point for COMUNITYmade shoppers: the charity selection. During usability tests, many users tried to add cart without realizing action was needed or that the tiles were buttons.
I started a small design studio armed with markers and a whiteboard desk. How might we make the charity selection more obvious? I invited people nearby (that identified as online shoppers) to tell us what they felt most comfortable using in this scenario. The card style selection was an unanimous favorite among those who wanted to read a bit more (without leaving the page), and it still satisfied those who wanted a quick checkout.
We also identified another pain not found in previous testing: shoppers were forced to select a charity for every shoe they chose to purchase. When we moved the charities to a one-time selection during checkout, our testers demonstrated more acceptance of the additional task.
Their reasoning? They expected the checkout process to take a few minutes and were already committed to buying the shoes.
After implementing changes to the charity selection, COMUNITYmade saw their online conversion rise from 0.17% to 0.43% which rose again to 0.57% once Facebook advertising ceased. While online traffic dropped and conversion rose, we suspect this is due to a rise to 90% organic traffic and more committed shoppers.
Retrospectively, I wish we had tested more flows rather than fixating on the selection UI. The client has since continued to experiment with another solution: asking for charity selection post purchase. Progress is built on iteration though, and this was a valuable experience.
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