MISSON

Expresso, a fashion brand with dozens of boutiques in the EU was looking to increase sales, and increase brand accessibility. To make their boutiques more approachable to  a wider audience.  Cnote was asked to research, test, and improve their boutique experience as well as to design their first ever e-commerce site.

MY ROLE

As the Lead Experience Designer and Consultant at Cnote, the team and I started the engagement with field research at several of their boutique locations, and worked to understand their customers, non-customers, and their store employees.  We used the insights to identify and implement improvements in the stores’ physical aspects,  improve brand messaging and communications, and to create a store brand manual to bring guidance and consistency to the buying/selling service.

In a follow-up project, we designed a complete e-commerce website to improve their sales  and strengthen the brand.

APPROACH

Discover & Understand

Observes and  interview dozens of boutique shoppers in several boutiques in Holland to understand in-store and online shopping needs and pain points. Also observe and interview boutique  sales and managerial staff to understand their point of view about the stores, the customers, and more.

Define

Used gained insights to define what changes are needed to the stores, in collaboration with Expresso stakeholders. For the e-commerce site, define needs and create site concepts.

Design & Test

Create mockups and storyboards for store layout changes, staff training, store manuals with brand principles and conversation guidelines for customer encounters.   Validate changes to store windows, fitting rooms,  new brand guidelines, and more. For the e-commerce site, create the complete website and test with shoppers.

Final Delivery

Deliver a complete Store Brand Operations Manual along with improvements to aspects of each store’s layout. For the e-commerce site, deliver complete designs for each screen of the e-commerce site.

Discovery Research & Identify improvements

Observe shoppers in boutiques to learn what works and doesn’t. What’s missing and needed.

  • Research done at  4-6 boutique locations

  • Dozens of  shoppers interviewed. Many more observed.

  • All employees interviewed

  • Customer groups (personas) identified.

  • Created  brand manual for all stores with clearer guidelines for sales staff

  • Identified online shopping needs

Design the  online shopping experience

Create flows, wireframes, and final visuals for all e-commerce pages

  • 15-20 page templates

  • 4+ prototyping rounds, each with user testing

  • Final visual designs for each template and unique variation

IMPACT

Increased boutique traffic

Each boutique adopted new brand guidelines and physical layout changes and saw increased store traffic.

Increased Sales

Increased sales even before new e-commerce site.

Stronger brand

Even more sales with the e-commerce site and better boutique  experience led to an even stronger brand.