Dome Beauty embarked on a mission: to successfully launch their new line of beauty products through an eCommerce platform. This uncharted territory posed a challenge for a predominantly male team.
Challenge:
Dome Beauty had encountered multiple agencies that failed to grasp the founders’ vision and target audience. As a result, they were left with a depleted budget and limited progress. With the launch deadline approaching and a warehouse full of products waiting to be sold, finding a rapid and effective solution became imperative.
My Role:
As the manager, my primary responsibility was to provide leadership and strategy. I acted as a mentor to a designer, architect, and researcher. Despite the tight timeline, my team was prepared for the challenge and eager to acquire new skills.
Research:
While the previous agencies had been unsuccessful, Dome Beauty diligently conducted activities such as focus groups and user research, which yielded valuable information. However, much of the data remained uncompiled and in handwritten form.
Competitive Analysis:
Since we were new to the cosmetics world, understanding the industry’s standards was crucial to delivering a design that would surpass expectations. We compared ten different sites and selected the top five based on standardized criteria.
Market Research:
We possessed abundant research in the form of written surveys, focus group notes, and whiteboard photos. However, all the information needed to be rewritten and analyzed to identify common threads and trends.
Strategy:
Our strategy revolved around addressing the three most prominent themes identified in the focus groups. Each theme had to be incorporated to ensure a successful launch.
Social Media:
We discovered that consumers largely relied on friend or expert referrals to discover new cosmetic brands. Therefore, integrating stories about Dome Beauty’s female-owned venture throughout the site was crucial.
Female Leadership:
Consumers expressed enthusiasm for a female-owned cosmetics company. Highlighting their journey and achievements became an integral part of our approach.
Product Education:
Understanding that application and results vary across brands and products, we recognized this potential challenge and aimed to provide comprehensive information to prevent user discouragement.
Approach:
After carefully considering our strategy, we selected the cloud-based eCommerce platform “Shopify.” Excitingly, the product designer had recently won an award for her exceptional user experience design. With our research completed and our strategy in place, we began developing the wireframes.
Architecture:
The wireframes were designed with simplicity in mind. We modified the existing base template to align with our strategic goals while ensuring a competitive user experience.
Design:
Upon selecting a design, one decision remained: whether to cater to users preparing for work or those getting ready for a night out. We chose to address both by repurposing some old code and creating a day and night theme within the same site. From sunrise to sunset, users were presented with a day theme featuring light colors and daytime imagery, while a night theme offered dark colors and evening imagery.
Collateral:
As Dome Beauty was a new brand, much of the work we were creating would set the standard moving forward. Consequently, we dedicated significant efforts to designing all aspects of Dome Beauty’s web presence.