Cosmetics Micro Shop
If you're seeing this, you shouldn't.
Note: This is a case study of work done by Sam Rojas at a consulting firm. It does not depict work produced independently by ROJI Design. The images used here are scrubbed re-creations of designs for reference and do not represent the entire completed project.
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital commerce, a renowned cosmetics brand looking to make its foray into the world of e-commerce reached out to a team led by Sam to design an scalable, mobile-first shopping experience powered by Shopify. The challenge was not only to establish a robust online presence but to integrate the shopping experience with social media engagement.
Project Plan
The primary objective was clear: design and deliver a captivating e-commerce microsite that not only showcased the brand's products in a fresh way but also considered social media influenced user shopping patterns.
Role & Responsibility
As a design lead for this project, Sam's responsibilities extended beyond crafting visually appealing interfaces. He played a pivotal role in understanding and translating the client's vision, maintaining constant communication, and steering the design process from inception to delivery. Biweekly checkpoints, design thinking sessions, and regular design reviews were all regular cadences with the client managed by Sam.
Design Process
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User Research
Engaging in frequent discussions with the client, the team delved into their aspirations and expectations. Challenges emerged during this phase, particularly in aligning e-commerce objectives with social media dynamics. Nevertheless, these hurdles fueled the team's determination to create a creative solution. By studying e-commerce patterns across the cosmetics industry and the way some of the top players are enabling shopping experiences within TikTok and Instagram, the team Sam led was able to recommend a direction for the client.
Product Flow
The product flow was designed to consider the various entry points from social media that a user would arrive from. Focusing on video-first platforms ensured that the experience was tied to video content, but a consideration was taken for paths arriving from static content like advertisements, text-posts, and gallery image post.
Conceptualization
The decision to leverage Shopify as the backend laid the foundation for a robust e-commerce infrastructure and allowed it to align with the backend for some of the client's other brand sites. The team would routinely connect with Shopify developers to gut-check their ideas and ground them in a buildable reality.
With the limitations of Shopify understood, the team got to work on designing an experience that blended social media and traditional e-commerce. The concept for the microsite was to land the user on a full-height video-focused gallery, allowing for a blend of brand and user generated content to introduce the product detail page. Tapping through the gallery would align with social media story UX patterns, mirroring the social media experience the users had just arrived from. A quick "Add to Cart" CTA grants the user with the ability to go from viewing a product in a TikTok/Instagram video to having it in their cart in fewer than 3 taps.
Wireframing sessions translated conceptual ideas into tangible structures, focusing on a user-friendly interface that seamlessly blended social media aesthetics with e-commerce functionality. The process was meticulously documented and executed in Figma, ensuring a consistent design language across both mobile and desktop platforms.
Design Execution
With a focus on social video, the team focused on the way that a blend of user generated content and brand content could create a more social shopping experience. By designing the pilot, we created an impact on defining the future of the client's digital presence, a goal achieved through creative sessions with client decision makers and our team of experience designers. What you're seeing are representational re-creations of the work delivered to the client.
Final Outcome
Upon delivering the designs, the client expressed excitement and satisfaction with the proposed solution. The project transitioned to a development team responsible for implementing the designs into a fully functional e-commerce microsite. While the final built version was not within scope for the team, the collaboration with the client and the internal team was a valuable learning experience. It showcased the importance of effective communication and adaptability in addressing unique challenges. This project exemplified the team's ability to meet the distinct needs of a client entering the e-commerce space. The resulting microsite, seamlessly blending social media and online shopping, stands as a testament to the successful collaboration between design innovation and client aspirations.
