CardsDirect

Web and Application Design

Project Overview

Cardsdirect.com had just been bought out and the new owners were pushing for an entire website up to date. They were looking to improve the entire experience from selecting and designing your greeting card to checking out. The biggest complaints from customers was that designing their card was too hard, plus the Checkout process was too long and you couldn’t save a CC or BizAccount for faster check out.

The Challenge

That was the previous owner was now the CEO and being that it was his original company he wasn’t always open to change. At one point during a meeting with him on some suggested changes he actually said to me “How are you going to tell me to change something, I don’t think it broke. I built a multi-million-dollar company off of this website?” From that point on I knew I needed to build a strong case as to why my suggestions were valid, for the benefit of the customer and business needs.

My Role

I was brought in for 8 months as a UX consultant to d0 a heuristic evaluation of the entire site, make suggested changes, build prototypes, test them, as well as the UI designs.

Discovery

I started with a heuristic evaluation of their website and while doing so saw several areas that for sure needed some updates. I also interviewed the support center manager and a few of their agents to understand what were the issues that customers would call for support on and their biggest complaints. From there I looked at their analytics and heat maps they had of their site. After I did a competitive analysis against some of their competitors and other eComm sites, I was able to see what commonalities there were, what was being done well and pull some points of reference for my presentation of problem areas and suggested changes.

Original Home Page

Original Card Gallery

Original Checkout

Original Designer

Define

After my presentation to the CEO, he and I discussed what areas I would need to concentrate on to meet the customer and business needs. Then, I started defining potential solutions and made prototypes to test agents with, they used the same website while helping customers so it made the most sense for quick interactions. I was able to learn fast on what could work and what wasn’t.

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Checkout Research

Design

Here is a select few designs that I tested to find the best User Experience. At the beginning of a redesign to the card designer, the owner was wanting to go big and asked that I explore many options.

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Card designer wireframes

Outcome

In the end, I turned over several solutions and designs for them to build from. Also, after several "Going Big" designs for the card editor, he asked me to scale it back some, which came out to be the card editor that is used today. About six months after my contract ended, I checked in with their data analyst to see how much, if any, the new direction had impacted sales. He reported to me that the time spent selecting a card, designing it and checking out had dropped by 35% and sales were up by 10%.