Case study: Handmade jewelry in the digital world
Designing e-commerce website for Lozana B.
2020 was definitely a hard time for a lot of us. Due to the current pandemic worldwide, local businesses are seing the demand of their services and products plummeting. Building an online presence seems like the only way to counter the situation for now and more and more businesses are quickly shifting attention to their digital strategy.
As part of Ironhack Paris second Design sprint, my teammates and I were asked to help one local professional to improve its online presence in order to be more competitive in the actual market. We decided to offer our expertise to Lozana B.
Our challenge: design a responsive website for this business.
💍 The Business
To understand the business goals of the stakeholder, we planned an interview with the stakeholder to understand more the brand, and the why behind the business. During this interview, we had a full understanding of Lozana B.
Lozana B is a French brand, based in the South of France, selling gold-filled jewelry with African pearls, Miyuki pearls and semi-precious stones. Deeply inspired by the values of family, union and harmony, Lozana B defines her work as colorful, minimalist, ethnic and made with love. During 8 days, our team worked hand in hand with Vania, the stakeholder, who also happens to be a mumpreneur.
Lozana B didn’t have any website when we started the project, and was mainly selling through her Instagram page and via word of mouth. Vania is very aware that she needs to work on her online presence but being a mum of two isn’t always an easy job when trying to develop her online visibility.
Our goal was to provide a prototype of her future e-commerce platform which meets her business goals and reflects her personality. This solution would help her share her passion and sell her personalized handmade jewelry on a wider level.
🔍 Competitive Research — Market research
Starting from scratch was a bit confusing at first so we needed to make a competitive research to understand the zone of genius of Lozana B and its positionnement.
Firstly, we wanted to understand the market she is acting in : costume jewelry.
Costume jewelries represent 25% of the jelwery market and are mostly sold to adults living in urban areas, especially women from 30 to 45. They are likely to be emancipated and independent women and treat themselves with nice jewelry from times to times. They are women who want original personalized jewelry and of good quality.
Costume jewelry have approchable prices and are a good alternative to luxe jewelry. There are also low entry barriers for new businesses and 60% of the market is coming from craft business. Over the last decade, there has been a tendecy of homemade and craft in this industry, and Esty has seen a rising number of people selling handmade jewleries on its platform.
When doing a SWOT analysis we found out some good insights :
State of the jewelry market:
- necessity to niche in order to stand out from the crowd
- a lot of people are now buying online their jewelry
- digital experience needs to be perfect to convey a sense of security, desirability and emotion, the story telling has to be well thought
- Fear of counterfeit and need to see the product
- marketing budget can be important to get attention from audience
Lozana B’s strengths and weaknesses:
- gold-filled : high-quality product
- 100% hand made very popular and desirable
- Lozana B has strong universe and unique selling point : colorful and ethnic world
- Lozana B relies on local suppliers
- Unique and personalized pieces
- Stands out from the crowd with modernity, minimalism and blend of many cultures
- No business plan or real strategy but real passion and wilingness to push the business to the next level
📋 Heuristic Evaluation
As Lozana B didn’t have any website, we conducted an Heuristic Evaluation of her main competitors on the market.
We analyzed some websites such as Ysie, Maison Gaston and Monsieur Paris, which are shops that sell upper quality costume jewelry. We tested their user flow to understand the journey of their user, see the conventions applied in e-commerce websites and also determine eventual areas where our solution can be improved compared to the competitors.
Here are some keypoints that we gathered through those evaluations and observations:
- Visual elements and beautiful quality pictures : mandatory
- Possibility to zoom in product pictures
- Pictures taken on models for a more realistic result
- Feeling of simplicity, fresh and earthy tones
- Lot of information about the security process of buying (secure payment, fast shipping etc)
- Brand universe important to include and storytelling really present.
Having those elements in mind, we could start working on the sitemap and userflow. The aim : the user can buy a product under 4 clicks.
We kept the navigation minimalist with a simplified sitemap. The user can access all category products from the navigation and learn more about the brand. A special button to ask for personalized jewelry added as well.
✏️ Wireframes
“Thanks to new devices, the desktop computer is no longer the primary way people access the internet. Instead, they’re turning to their mobile devices and the data seems to show that trend will only continue, as more and more people around the globe primarily use mobile devices to get online.”
— Mobile vs Desktop Internet Usage (2020)
Lozana B’s clientele is mainly coming from platform like Facebook or Instagram, and the general trend to use mobile over desktop, it made more sense that we start working on designing the wireframes for mobile first.
🧪 Usability testing
To get real feedback on our prototype, we organized user testing with 6 different people : 3 of them tested the desktop prototype and 3 the mobile prototype.
For this testing, we asked the user to buy a bracelet from the website. While they were navigating through the prototype, we carefully observed their behavior facing the solution and we were able to understand what was working and what wasn’t.
Here are some feedbacks:
Positive ✅
- overall flow is nice and coherent
- understand what is going on at every step of the page
- progress bar important of the buying process
- Nice to have different views of the product
- important to learn more about the creator
- 2 buttons add to cart and buy now useful, important for those who don’t really have time and want a fast checkout
- correspond to want they usually seem on a e-commerce website : same layout and organization of information
Need to change ❌
- our simplified buying process didn’t work (need more steps : 1 confirmation of cart, 2 information of delivery, 3 process payment)
- search bar is not needed
- header too big on desktop
- offer the possibility to buy without having an account
Following those feedbacks, we tweaked our prototype to make the UX more inline with what user would expect. User testing is crucial to refine and iterate the prototype as some functionalities on our prototype were missing at first. Having our mid-fi all set, we then moved to the exciting part: set a mood and the brand colors to bring a hi-fi prototype to life, for a more realistic result.
🧬 Moodboard and brand attributes
Vania, the stakeholder, is a real life lover and is inspired from splash of colors around her. She also get inspiration from African and Carabean cultures when crafting her jewelry. That’s the reason why we defined the brand as Ethnic, Lively, and Vibrant.
As you can see from the mood-board here, we focused on a really colorful universe while integrating some ethnic elements. All the elements all-together give the impression of a dynamic brand with the yellow orange and turquoise colors. Vania is someone who has a strong personality, with a real story behind her business.
The brand already has a logo and we wanted to keep the font used through our e-commerce solution. Because the brand is really into a creative mood, we included a script font to add to the brand this friendly and lively side.
💎 Hi-fi prototypes
We also worked on a responsive desktop version that has a bit more brand elements on the homepage that we didn’t use on mobile to make the version clean and breathing.
🛠 Next Steps
- Unfortunately we didn’t have the time to test this prototype again but one of the previous tester has seen the hi-fi prototype. He was pretty satisfied with the end solution and really felt like he was entering the brand universe while navigating inside the website in a nice and easy way. We would like to test this hi-fi prototype to other users and see how this e-commerce website could be improved.
- Add filters on the shop page would be a great idea when more products will be available, so that the user can quickly browse through the whole collection
- Find a way to order from the the shop personalized jewelry using an interactive interface, instead of just sending a plain message.
💡Key learnings
- The jewelry industry, even if business are not part of the luxury part, has certain standard. The craft made part of the business are no exception: buyers have a level of demand to actually to the leap and proceed to the buying act
- In jewelry, the importance of nice visuals is crucial. In a time when everything needs to be aesthetically pleasing to look, jewelry don’t break the rules and event put an emphasis on that particular point. Business in this industry need to convey a quality image to their potential customers at all times.
- Lozana B is a brand with really strong personality and it was challenging to keep the values of the stakeholder by all means while applying UX/UI design principles.
User testing is crucial to refine and iterate the prototype, we thought that some functionalities were not necessary, which leads me to the final point; never forget the user and the cognitive models user have to build the perfect user experience for them.
