Any general search for online consumer shopping habits and you’ll quickly note 
the frustration referred to as “tab hell”. A buyer browses an online store, opening up each item that catches their eye in a new tab to sift through later, a pattern that isn’t optimal but something that most of us still do. The online marketplace is also inundated with products and a simple Google search for Nike sneakers will yield millions, if not billions of results. Right from Google, before a customer even opens your site, they’re opening up several other websites simultaneously and browsing that same product across many other stores. Our first challenge, how do we keep customers engaged in Wish ATL and focused on the products on Wish’s site? How do we give them exactly what they’re looking for here and now and allow them to forget the other seven open tabs?  This is a challenged faced by many retailers today yet most stay true to the tried and tested patterns followed by all online stores, Wish ATL was trying to change the norm and lead the way to trial a new way to shop online, willing to learn and iterate as we went.

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Knowing that we had an engineering team ready and waiting, I did an audit of their current site taking into consideration our goals for this project and improvements we’d need to make along the way, providing both short and long term adjustments that we’d need to make. For example, customers could only purchase a single pair of sneakers, however there was a quantity field on the item that allowed them to check out with multiple, regardless of the design direction this was one of the many interactions we needed to update. This helped prevent both our customers from feeling frustrated that their order was cancelled and saved employees time in having to cancel an order and explain why to the customer.

In parallel with the designs, Wish ATL was also trialing a rewards program to keep customers returning to the brand. Events themed around the next sneaker drop tend to attract celebrities and influences from across the country, meaning they were the place to be seen at for customers but also, events were sometimes the only way you could guarantee yourself access to the product being dropped too. Given the exclusivity of these events, part of the loyalty program planned to reward customers with tickets and presale options for future sneaker drops, keeping them returning to and purchasing from the store. Since rewards were becoming increasingly important for the brand, we explored ways to highlight its importance online too.

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Early on in the process I met with the team to walk through the store and experience all the intricies they’d weaved throughout. The blue wave in the carpet was a subconcious path that customers walked along and followed, flowing past the shiny metalic surfaces contrasted next to the overly fluffy display cabinents, the store was previously a library so the staircase is made entirely of books that were once there to be read, going down the stairs is as if you’re going through the books into another realm. There are also subtle illustrations in the wallpaper and a not so-subtle wall decorated with thousands of shoelaces, hiding the entrance way to the back office but also reminiscent of a tv screen and the pixelated view you’d see once the signal was lost. All these hidden elements (and more) the team had asked to be incorporated into the site, however I trusted my gut and working with them, realised they wanted this experience of finding small easter eggs throughout, with connections to the roots of the city and it’s customers, not a carbon copy from the physical to the digital.

The blue path is represented in the navigation, the blue colour highlighting where you are and your next step (CTAs) and the various textures throughout the store translated into background patterns, utilising the same illustrations and a peg-board like appearance with both rigid outlines and free form graffiti pens. (The graffiti also paying homage to their physical location, where graffiti artists regularly paint over the side of the store). We had planned for the page to load in pixels too, replicating that of the meaning behind the shoelace wall and when customers navigated between the pages, we’d zoom out, weave through a “story”, and then hone back into a new area of the site, almost like passing down the stairs into that new realm.

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The fitting room concept was an idea the team was drawn too and committed to trying, with a belief that in the future, this could evolve into an  AR focused experience with customers digitally trying on the products from home. My challenge was how to make this work in a world where AR isn’t quite as accessible just yet. The result was a place where customers could collect and share the items, rotating and resizing items to look at the details of the product and compare and contrast them side by side before adding them to the cart. An experience we hoped could replace the idea of opening multiple tabs to complete the same task. We also wanted this to be personal to the customer, so we introduced the ability to customise/graffiti the background, snapshot items or outfits to share to social media and to pull in previously purchased items to get a sense of how their wardrobe could look. There were multiple closets available too, for example Friday Night, Wedding Attire or Summer 2021 depending on the look or style the customer was going for and these could easily be accessed by an in-store salesperson to help curate and advise customers on new pieces if requested.

Given how quickly sneakers can sell out, it was also important that we weren’t creating an additional required step before checkout, meaning adding an item to the fitting room was optional. Alongside this, we also created a more seamless buy now button for customers signed in to their loyalty accounts to allow them to  purchase an item with a single click.

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In the end, this result was too large of a project for the engineering agency that had been contracted from the beginning to be able to deliver. Based on early conversations and their portfolio, I had raised concerns to the team but was assured they'd signed a contract and promised they could complete it. We held weekly syncs with the team and documented updates and new requirements regularly, however ultimately the engineering team backed out, stating it was beyond their skillset and they couldn't outsource it further. Unfortunately this placed the project on an indefinite hold which is where it still stands today.