GLDN

Redesigning a customizable jewelry brand's e-commerce experience to enhance customers' connections to products.

Web Design | User Experience

My Role

Design Libraries | Page Wireframes, Designs, + Prototype | User Testing

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Software

Figma | UserTesting® |Shopify CMS

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Team

Evan Donnelly & Han Shaffer: Co-Design
Simplistic: Custom Theme/App Development

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Live Site

gldn.com ↗

About the Brand

GLDN is an e-commerce jewelry brand specializing in hand-crafted pieces. Customers can personalize most pieces with an almost limitless array of illustrations and inscriptions to create keepsakes inspired by their unique stories.

The aesthetically minimalist brand emphasizes connection through storytelling, giving, and empowering customers with affordable luxury products.

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The Challenge

As the company grew, both in size and in order volume, we identified several aspects of the existing site and platform that were limiting our ability to sustainably scale.

Our top priorities to address were:

Boot-strapped order experience resulting in inefficiencies impacting conversion rate, customer service, and production timelines
Difficulty communicating complicated personalization opportunities within Squarespace framework led to difficult to navigate, wordy, and sometimes duplicated listings
Difficulty maintaining consistent messaging and pricing across the site
Limitations of compatible e-commerce tools restricted both marketing growth and customer experience improvement
Time-consuming work arounds and code injections were required to create product collection pages that reflected specific marketing campaigns
The desire to create enhanced experiences around the maker to customer connection and other product storytelling that we were sharing in marketing materials

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Strategy

Utilizing customer feedback to drive decisions, we transitioned to a custom developed Shopify template that enabled us to create a cohesive e-commerce experience.

Streamlining the shopping and ordering process, we enhanced the customer connection to products through real-time personalization previews.

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The Solution

Priorities addressed via:

Designed custom order process including a step-by-step modular system real-time previews to guide customers and comprehension of what they were ordering
Real-time previews enabled us to cut complicated charts and wordy order instructions from listings while improving customer comphrehension
Shopify CMS filters enabled us to apply unique messaging to different product groups and update from a single point for cohesive site-wide messaging
Switching to Shopify enabled us to integrate previously incompatible tools for targeted marketing and improved customer experiences
We were able to create blocks and pages that could be easily updated to feature makers and customer stories about their jewelry.
User testing to ensure clarity of path to comprehend brand ethos, find products, comprehension of unique order process, and check out
Figma UI component library created for visual consistency of elements across site
Figma Personalization library created to mirror scale of physical jewelry components, illustration stamps, and stamping font sets for real-time previews

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The Results:

Improved Customer Experience = 30% conversion rate increase, 15% AOV increase
Orders came through with fewer questions and printed identical preview on order slips so reducing customer service outreach, personalization mistakes in production, and free reworks/returns resulting from misunderstandings of what had been ordered.

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