In 2021, Daraoma launched their first Shopify e-commerce website. However, its website didn't take into consideration the experience of their shoppers and soon quickly became a dumping ground of bad branding. I joined as a freelancer to
redesign and rebrand their online presence to improve customer confidence, increase conversion rates and retain existing customers.
— view the live websiteTimeline
4 month contract
Sole UX Designer working on
User Research
Prototyping + Testing
HTML/CSS Code Customisation
Photography + Content Writing
Success within 3 months of launch!
- 24% increase of online sales compared to its previous 6 months.
- Personalised products which never made a sale, are now one of Daraoma's best sellers.
- 79% of online sales were new customers.
- 31% increase of average order
Prior to Covid, you could catch Daraoma's home fragrances and self-care products in markets all around Sydney. Fast forward, markets got shut down and sales came to a halt.
The owners launched their first Shopify e-commerce website. But, it quickly became a dumping ground with:
- Inadequate product descriptions
- Inaccurate inventory
- Subpar images
- Poor grammar and content
It lacked basic features that allowed their customers to purchase confidently since they can't see, touch or smell the product in person.
☁️ How can we create online experience that improves customer confidence, increase conversion rates and retain Daraoma's existing customers?
The target market for those purchasing home fragrances and self care products are
-35
Mostly women
Under 35
$$-$$$
Middle-high incomes
All races
However, >55% of sales are made in-person than online. Why? How do users shop for similar products?
Survey: 25 customers
We asked Daraoma's past customers and those who enjoy buying similar products about their:
- Typical habits when buying similar products in person and online.
- Influencing factors when buying similar products in person and online.
We also interviewed some of our users to better understand what we're doing wrong.
Interview: 7 users
- The current Daraoma website—what is the good, bad and the ugly?
- Their competitors—what do they typically look for when buying similar products online?
Key Insights
Most users would rather buy home fragrances and self-care products in person, or both in person and online.
Buys in-person
Buys online
Buys online and in-person
4 influential factors when buying home fragrances and self-care products online.
- Quality of the product images
- Unclear descriptions about the product's scent
- Quality of ingredients
- Trusted Reviews
Users thought the current website navigation was simple and efficient. However, there were a number of pain points:
- Afterpay hero image was the first thing users saw. One user thought they were on the Afterpay website :D
- Little to no descriptions about the product's scent
- Confusing text, bad grammar, wrong spelling and messy use of fonts made it hard to read.
- No contact us section made them unreliable and untrustworthy.
Daraoma's customers need features that resemble real-life experiences such as sight, smell or touch to feel confident that the product will meet their expectations when it arrives in the mail, which the current website could not provide.
The redesign aimed to achieve these goals to be successful.
Modern
The redesign should be visually refreshed to reflect the modern personality of the business and packaging.
Beyond the Website
The redesign should showcase Daraoma as a whole — who they are as a brand, what they stand for and why they are different from their competitors.
Clear Communication
The redesign should clearly communicate relevant and useful information about the product (descriptions, dimensions, volume, scent etc) so the customer feels confident about their purchase.
We tested an entire website restructure with our users
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Style Guide
NAV MENU
Futura Bold
16pt
#4a4a4a
Body
Futura
16pt
#4a4a4a
And added a little love into their products (taken on my apartment balcony)
Learned that putting a little love and intent into a shoppers experience can go a long way for a brand's image.
Initially, the owners weren't convinced that an overhaul of the website was needed until they saw our user research results.
They knew their products were good quality but didn't realise how badly it translated online.
With simple additional features and clear descriptions, they saw how it could provide customers a lot more confidence to purchase their products.
And, building a responsive website is hard work!
I really pushed my limited (what i thought) technical abilities in front and back end web development. Fun project nonetheless!