Initially, Silverfoxx Wear & Things LLC’s website was on a static ‘ecwid’-templated website. Users could not buy products on the website based on its limited basic plan. This website also had no product customization capabilities; the client was unable to set up inventory levels, product tags, or prices. Thus, re:Bloom’s solution was to use Shopify to update Silverfoxx Wear & Things LLC’s website in order to make it more modern and easy to navigate. We implemented it through its developer feature, and added the client as an administrator to oversee progress throughout development.
The website had one general product page that consisted of a gallery view of every product available, making it hard to navigate or search for products that were desirable. One key problem was the digital fluency of the client; our team wanted to put an extra focus on an easy to maintain website, to allow for long-term sustainability.
We created a home page that highlighted the company at a high level, with a slideshow at the top featuring satisfied clients, followed with collections and product images, and then touching personal stories on the creation of the business and motivations behind select collections. We have roughly 80 images featured on the website, with 15 high quality images featured on the home and about page. We developed 7 new collections featured on the collections page to better differentiate the client’s numerous products. Furthermore, a contact form was developed on the about us page to allow for communication between customers and the client.
Our solution was to completely redesign a new site from the ground up and following basic structure from the client’s existing Ecwid site using the Shopify platform and to take into account the design elements we identified by analyzing competitors. Each page was redesigned to fit the aesthetic of the company with standardized colors, fonts, and styling. Additionally, we refined the shopping flow by adding featured products on product pages and the homepage to encourage shoppers to check out related items that they may wish to purchase. Lastly, we developed training materials to help with key features of Shopify that our client wished to learn how to use, creating two PDFs with resources for sustainable usage.
Initially, Silverfoxx Wear & Things LLC’s website was on a static ‘ecwid’-templated website. Users could not buy products on the website based on its limited basic plan. This website also had no product customization capabilities; the client was unable to set up inventory levels, product tags, or prices. Furthermore, the website had one general product page that consisted of a gallery view of every product available, making it hard to navigate or search for products that were desirable. We wanted to make an easy to navigate website - nothing too unique with the design, but that it would flow well and look professional. Our team wanted to put an extra focus on an easy to maintain website, to allow for long-term sustainability. We iterated through Figma wireframes to give a general structure for the home page, collections page, and product pages. The client found those Figma wireframes difficult to conceptualize, so we began Shopify-store development before hi-fi wireframes were fully finished. We used a Shopify theme we liked which had room for our light blue, gray color theme, with mixes of sans serif fonts, and large high quality images.
The project team weighed multiple website platforms for the Client to use, and ultimately settled on using Shopify. Shopify offers free development for the website before it is fully implemented, which allows for affordability and extra flexibility in designing its initial features. Shopify offers a wide variety of back-end features that allow for easy product management and inventory tracking. Furthermore, their ‘drag n drop’ functionality allows for easy changes in the theme, making the design easy to maintain. We conducted competitive analysis across multiple fronts: whether PGH local businesses, multinational corporations, or digital-based apparel stores, we found a culmination of design options that met our goals. Our solution was to use Shopify to update Silverfoxx Wear & Things LLC’s website in order to make it more modern and easy to navigate. We implemented it through its developer feature, and added the client as an administrator to oversee progress throughout development. This way the client did not need to pay but could oversee all development.
During our weekly client meetings, we held a feedback session where we showed all of our relevant work for the week to our client and solicited feedback by asking pointed questions about anything we were unsure about. We discussed the feedback as a team following these sessions to identify changes that needed to be made. For user testing, Shawnel gave us a list of people that had signed up on the original site so that we had users from the exact target demographic. We texted the users and ended up having 3 users respond. Only 2 users ended up vomiting at scheduled times. Thus, to get more testing, we reached out to other users to meet 6 total user-tests. We wrote a standardized script with an emphasis on giving them time to explore the site. We then asked them questions about the design of the site, how easy they feel it is to navigate, and specific wordings and design elements that we were unsure about. Some feedback on how the homepage was cluttered, or how much information was on the collections page helped us reconsider the information we were outputting, especially if our end goal was to have a simple to navigate framework.
Our client was not tech proficient, so a big portion of our website development process centered around the training side. For example, uploading assets to Drive / creating folders was difficult, and logging into Shopify could give various errors. For the last few weeks, we spent every session screen sharing and walking through aspects of the website. For example, this would involve going through the product section, outlining how exactly to upload products, change tags, implement various sizes and pricing. We would then follow up by adding links to Shopify-created resources so that Shawnel could experiment with the explained sections herself. We continued this process to make sure we were on the same page. By the end of the cohort, we also taught Shawnel how to use Shopify’s very own resources. This is because it is extremely broad with the information it offers. We ended the Cohort providing Shawnel with a PDF with 3 pages worth of links, and a Shopify off-boarding PDF that had more tailored content.