Allure
2021-2022
ROLE Head Product Designer
PRODUCT DESIGN LEAD Efi Ntoumouzi
PRODUCT DESIGNERS Esha Patel, Cristy Ball
ART DIRECTOR Ingrid Fowler
PHOTOGRAPHY Christine Haan
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jessica Cruel
Illustration by Hirve Kwimo
Overview
Transform Allure into a revenue powerhouse by developing a frictionless user journey for a headless Shopify checkout experience. Effectively transitioning a trusted beauty brand from a content-centric site to a fusion of editorial and commerce.
Research & Strategy
We devised a content-to-commerce strategy with two key approaches:
1. Streamlining the user funnel and setting KPIs for each stage to gauge effectiveness.
2. Crafting an activation plan outlining the roadmap towards establishing an integrated shop.
The path to success
To unlock the full commerce potential for Allure, we needed to figure out where shopping fits into the user journey and fix the site structure accordingly. Utilizing user archetypes we constructed journey maps to identify friction and reveal potential opportunities.
Exploring user journeys through archetypes
I conducted a card sorting workshop involving cross-functional partners from editorial, SEO, product, and marketing. The technique is used to gain a clearer insight into how we could structure a website's information architecture.
We then devised two sitemaps and used tree testing (treejack)—a method to evaluate site structure—to identify the more successful one.
Card Sorting: Organizing topics by placing cards into categories to explore information structuring
Intentional design
After finalizing the site architecture plan, our attention shifted to creating a mega menu, which is a large dropdown menu on a website designed to simplify the discovery and navigation of various sections and options.
Allure mega menu with skin care selected
Narrative commerce
To optimize the user flow for shopping, we improved the experience by crafting category landing page designs that showcase product range and effective merchandising strategies.
Introducing a shopping hub which drives discovery to curated collections and commerce articles
Confidence catalyst
We examined the connection between article content and the newly introduced product detail pages (PDP). Here we created a 360 approach, linking articles to PDPs and PDPs back to articles to reinforce trust in product recommendations.
Editorial to commerce journey
True on-site purchase
Employing our headless Shopify strategy, our cart-to-checkout designs featured a universal cart seamlessly integrated into our main navigation, departing from the conventional practice of shop sub-domains.
PDP to cart
Results
We saw impressive outcomes: an 80% year-over-year boost in clicks for the mega menu and a 165% YoY surge in unique visitors to the category landing pages.
These traffic gains—coupled with purchase funnel improvements and seamless on-site checkout—fueled substantial growth in Allure's product sales and commerce revenue.
