Tienda

A lot of people buy from online vendors now, but it can still be a chore. Tienda set out to simplify e-commerce, especially for people shopping for fashion.

The problems of e-commerce are notoriously hard, so we focused on its UX issues: a poor shopping experience, a lack of favourable reviews, frustrating checkouts and inadequate product descriptions. I led product design and research over six weeks, from October to December 2022, covering user research, UX design, illustration and brand, and development.

The brief was simple to say and hard to answer: how do you redefine and simplify the online shopping experience people already have?

Research surfaced the same frustrations again and again. Shoppers wanted affordable products that were still good quality, and a balance between price and convenience. They looked for filter and sort options to narrow down a price range and couldn’t find them, felt product details were too thin to decide, and abandoned purchases when checkout became too much work.

To refine the shopping experience, we started by understanding user needs and pain points through research. From there, the approach had four parts:

• Simplify onboarding, with options like social sign-in.
• Make browsing easier, with clear navigation and personalised recommendations.
• Streamline checkout, with multiple payment options and clear progress indicators.
• Keep improving, based on what users tell us.

A simple, good-looking site with an easy-to-navigate landing page. If the experience feels smooth from the very first screen, people are far more likely to keep going.

Products are laid out in an appealing, easy-to-scan arrangement, with detailed product descriptions, reviews, and models wearing the clothes in the product images. All of it is there to build trust.

Filtering and sorting let people decide what they see at the top of a long list of products. Even when sorting doesn’t bring exactly the right product to the top, it still lets them work through the list systematically, in an order that makes sense to them.

Most of the users we interviewed complained that checkout was the least simple part of shopping online, so this flow got the most attention: a clear cart, several delivery and payment choices, an unmistakable confirmation, and a record of previous orders.

Heuristics helped guide my decisions, but I needed to test with real people to prove our hypotheses. I ran moderated usability sessions where users tried to shop on the prototype and thought aloud as they went. Two requests stood out: being able to choose the currency they shop in, and a track-my-order screen, because it made them feel safe. Both are in the final designs: a currency filter on every collection, and a “Track my order” button on the confirmation screen.

100% of the users said the checkout process was “seamless”. 75% felt safe and said they would shop on Tienda, because the site wasn’t cluttered and the flow was easy. 65% loved the choice of images: using models let them picture the product on a real body, which made them feel safer buying it.