Della Terra
A women led, shoe brand aiming to change the sustainability and inclusivity game in fashion.
Della Terra wants to bring a fresh, must-have take on fashion that feels accessible and versatile, while embracing a sustainable, ethical and inclusive purpose that matters and is currently absent from the market today.
client work | research & redesign | 2.5 weeks
The Challenge
People were NOT getting the sense that this is a fashionable shoe brand with core values of sustainability and inclusivity, the common terms associated with the website were “generic”, “commercial”, and that it “lacked a soul”
So even though Della Terra has the mission, vision, and products to address the issues, their current website was not doing a great job at communicating these goals, initiatives, and value propositions that sets them apart.
Della Terra hired us to understand, research, and completely redesign their current website for their Spring 2021 re-launch.
My Role
Given the tight timelines (2.5 weeks) and volume of work, I took over the following roles:
Head Researcher: Spearheading the initial research, and confirming it was solid and cohesive since our designs would be built based on our findings.
Designer: Focused on the “sustainability” angle of the rebrand and confirmed cohesiveness throughout the entire redesign.
Project Manager: Making sure we were distributing the work logically and efficiently throughout the 2.5 weeks.
Point of Contact: Prioritizing deliverables from the agreed upon scopes.
SCOPE
We jumped on a call with Della Terra CEO, Emily Landsman, to discuss scope, timelines, and deliverables.
We agreed to focus on the following for the scope of the project:
Full Website Redesign.
Deliver research and statistics regarding the markets POV on sustainability and inclusivity in fashion.
Help communicate a sense of clean, organic, fresh, and chic at a glance on the website.
Highlight their sustainability partners.
Time permitting: Incorporate a shoe calendar drop view SOMEWHERE on the website, backed by user research.
Before jumping into research, what do we know?
The problem in the industry…
The fashion industry has historically been a very saturated space, making it difficult to break through and establish a new brand. However, as peoples’ preferences, priorities, and values shift through time, it allows for new brands to identify and address what is missing in the market.
In today’s climate, customers continue to pursue their personal styles and fashion trends, but now we know that sustainability and inclusivity are playing a much larger role than ever before.
Della Terra encourages people to opt for quality over quantity and buy with a purpose, rather than contributing to the wastefulness of fast fashion.
RESEARCH
Della Terra’s Competitive Angle
Research
We began by putting down on paper our initial understanding of the problem space and industry.
Our hypothesis was pretty straight forward - Users don’t want to sacrifice style over sustainability when it comes to their fashion choices. Additionally, with a gender-fluid audience, brands need to keep up with inclusivity and a broad range of offerings to accommodate all lifestyles.
This plus our overall assumptions of the pain points led us to our initial problem statement.
“How might we provide users with a reliable e-commerce website that reflects sustainability and inclusivity, while offering high fashion products?”
With this problem statement, we were able to dive into Della Terra’s competitive standing. We leveraged:
Through which we learned that a new brand like Della Terra heavily leverages their customer base and partners to make their name known early on.
Where we distributed the X-axis as “Affordable vs. High-End” and the Y-axis as “Sustainable vs. Fast Fashion”, which placed Della Terra in the Sustainable and High End quadrant.
This helped us notice that a few of the main features Della Terra could benefit from are a chatbot, rewards program, and potential physical stores in the future.
First look at the original Della Terra website
We needed to see what we were working off of, what does the current Della Terra website look like.
Identifying initial, pre-research, redesign opportunities
As UX Designers, we immediately saw a million opportunities to help the website right away.
How is the current website performing?
Understanding the current Della Terra website’s pitfalls, its high points, perceived image, etc. will dictate what we need to prioritize and adjust.
Before we let the wrath of users test the website, we conducted a Heuristic Evaluation following the ABBY method to understand what we were working with, clearly laying out the existing website’s navigation performance, accessibility, cohesiveness, etc.
We examined the site as if we were a user, and wrote down observations relating to each heuristic followed with recommendations to improve.
To highlight the main points of the Heuristic evaluation, we learned that:
The fact that only 2 out of the 10 levels meets best practices is a very serious issue.
Things such as Findable, Accessible and Delightful all do not meet best practices.
For an e-commerce brand and website, not meeting best practices for Credibility is a big problem since it relates to people needing to feel comfortable inputting their payment information.
User Interviews
Research
After setting the baseline of where we were starting, we ran User Interviews to see if we could validate our initial understanding of the problem now solely based on what the market thinks.
Through the user interviews we wanted to learn about 3 different topics:
Online Shopping Habits
Sustainability Preferences
Opinions on Inclusivity
We interviewed 7 people, which lead us to identifying the following trends:
Users don’t like being limited by gender on clothing. They want to buy whatever they want to buy.
Users need to be spoon fed a company’s sustainability mission to notice it and get on board.
A few of the biggest pain points right now are related to not being able to touch or try on an item online, and being bombarded with emails about brands' new releases.
If a user needs to contact a brand or return an item, how convenient this is is often a huge differentiator amongst people.
Through the feedback and data we gathered so far, we were able to build our Persona. We created Frankie, and the emotional journey she goes through when looking for brands that resonate with her.
Our main takeaway was that we would need to find a way to build and maintain a loyal customer base, continually referencing a resounding quote from a user interview who said -
“If I support the cause, I’ll buy anything.”
Through Frankie, we wanted to also understand how she would navigate a common task without Della Terra.
We leveraged a User Journey to better understand Frankie’s emotional highs and lows when trying to buy a new pair of sneakers and donate her old pair.
This led us to narrow down the main opportunities we should keep in mind when thinking of the website navigation and flow:
Della Terra needs to be seen as a clear “one stop shop” where Frankie can get fashionable and sustainable shoes, while also having the option to donate her old pair.
Avoiding users having to dig through information to find their sustainable and inclusivity initiatives and those partners that help make it happen.
Clear and non discriminatory sizing options and charts so people can but whatever shoe they like, regardless of gender.
Engaging and fun way to display how people's purchases have made an impact in the environment.
We kept Frankie at the forefront of our development, but before we moved forward, we asked ourselves - were we right? Was our initial understanding of the problem correct?
And in this case, yes! Well, almost. By redefining it a bit, we are now focusing on the following…
Revised Problem Statement
“How Might We help Frankie feel confident that she’s purchasing a quality product that fits her body and style from a company that shares her commitment to sustainability?”
Initial User Testing & Prioritizing Features
Research
We put the current website to the test. And we did this by asking our 5 interviewees to complete the following tasks:
Find the brands sustainability partners
Find information on the brands founder
Select a heel in a color and size and add to the bag
The results were… expected. On average, it took users 42 seconds to finish the tasks, with an 80% success rate. These aren’t awful numbers, however, with how tight the competition is in the fashion industry, these need (and will) be better.
But you’re probably wondering, enough with numbers, what did people say about what it looks? They said it seemed extremely commercial, lacked a bit of soul, and looked like just another women’s shoe brand.
Before jumping into the fun design stuff, the last thing we want to do is leverage a MoSCoW map to fully lay out what features are necessary for the first release and which ones can wait. And a Feature Prioritization Matrix to realistically estimate how much effort said features will require to build and how essential they are for the experience.
This brought us to prioritize things such as:
Search Filters
Account Creation
Sizing Chart
Partner pages
Scrolling pages
DESIGN
Redesigning the Information Architecture and Navigation Structure
Design
We started by conducting a round of Open Card Sorting to understand people’s mental model of how della terra’s existing website offerings are naturally organized. And with these results, we then ran a Tree Study to make sure our second iteration of the navigation structure improved users’ experience.
Navigation structure of the original website
Navigation structure of the proposed website
The Tree Study results all proved that the same tasks that were asked to be completed on the original navigation drastically improved in both time and success rate on the proposed navigation.
First Round of Prototypes
Design
We conducted a Design Studio as a team to begin building our Mid Fidelity (gray scale, little to no copy, and no images) prototype so we can test our initial structure.
Mid Fidelity - Home Page
Mid Fidelity - Shop Page
Mid Fidelity - Social Impact Page
We conducted our second round of User Tests on our Mid Fidelity prototype, with the same 3 tasks as the first ones. And the results were looking up:
It now took users an average of 23 seconds to complete the tasks, that’s a ~50% improvement.
Success rate went up to 87%, compared to 80% from the first round of testing.
Users did run into a few issues such as confusing the location of partner information in the “about the company” area, and sizing of fonts and images.
With this in mind, we developed our High Fidelity (full color, images, copy, and functionality) prototype including the feedback we received.
Della Terra 2.0
We designed the new website to feel clean, organic, modern. Made sure the new navigation and information architecture was intuitive. But most importantly, we designed a seamless shopping experience that assures people they are supporting a brand who CARES about their environmental impact and caters to people from all walks of life.
TESTING
Redesigning and Adding a Feature
Testing
Before running our final round of testing on the latest version of the prototype, we added one new task: “Find out when the brand is releasing new styles.”
Once we built the calendar drop view and functionality, and we incorporated the 4th task to test the flow, we conducted our final round of user testing in our High Fidelity prototype and the results continued to improve!
The average time on task went from 23 seconds to 16 seconds, that’s a 70% improvement.
Overall success rate went up to 93% from 87%
Below is a preview of what it would look like for users to find the calendar drop feature -
Calendar Drop Feature
Even though we did not run Mid Fidelity testing on the calendar drop capability since it was a later addition, the individual results were amazing to see.
We had 100% success rate on people finding and understanding the feature and navigation, and the average completion time was 12 seconds for users who had never seen the website before, these results made it clear that the tool and layout was a success.
RECOMMENDATIONS
What we delivered to the Della Terra team
Through many iterations of the prototype, and usability testing, both quantitative and qualitative data proved that we were able to deliver on the mission of making the new Della Terra website better communicate their fashion, sustainability, and inclusivity initiatives.
Full Research Report
A very detailed and thorough document with all our methodologies, research, design process, and justifications.
Design File
A file for the developers to get exact measurements and information on button design, spacing between assets, hex codes, and fonts to begin development.
Spec Document
Includes detailed information on how the navigation was built, annotated wireframes, and the style guide we built to keep the website cohesive.
Presentation
We walked Emily and her team through our findings and designs to be able to articulate our motivations and reasoning, and opened it up for any questions and feedback.
What we recommend
As with any brand’s product development, research is never truly done, therefore we recommend the following next steps for implementation and continued growth:
Usability Testing
Run one more round of usability testing on the final iteration of the website to ensure that the final changes and updates are well received.
Website Interactivity
Leverage further interactivity on the website’s butter bar and main hero image on the home page.
Emphasize Inclusivity
Expand on the images used to really emphasize on the inclusivity aspect of the brand. (e.g: show diversity through including all body shapes and sizes, people of color, different genders/LGBTQ+, etc.)
Through this journey, we really learned that people are more straightforward than we thought when it comes to fashion, they simply want stylish products that fit and won’t hurt the environment.
Our job as UX designers is to help communicate and connect the brands that are doing this right with the audience that is craving this attention.